Boston  Monday  Lectures 
1880-81. 


LIBRARY 

OF  TIIK 

University  of  California. 

Mrs.  SARAH  P.  WALSWORTH. 

Received  October ,  iH94' 
<t/lccessions  No.S^^^^^S^-      Cla^No, 


^0 


BOSTON    MONDAY    LECTURES, 

1880-1881. 


^^  Before  the  close  of  the  present  century,  the  supreme 
questions  before  fuen  for  their  final  decision  will  be  the 
religious  questionsP  —  Guizot. 


Boston  Monday  Lectures,  1880-81 


CHRIST 


AND 


MODERN    THOUGHT. 


TOi'tJ  a  Prelfmmarg  SLecttire, 

ON    THE    METHODS    OF    MEETING    MODERN 
UNBELIEF, 

By  JOSEPH    COOK. 


g,  B.  WALSWORTH,  ALBlOIJi  J 

^^  Of  THB 

[UHIVBRSIT7] 


BOSTON 

ROBERTS    BROTHERS, 

1881. 


^m^^ 


JBRsa 


Copyright,  1881, 

By  Roberts  Brothers. 


University  Press: 
John  Wilson  &  Son,  Cambridge. 


While  these  lectures  were  delivered  by  gentle- 
men invited  by  the  committee  in  charge  of  the 
Monday  Lectureship,  yet,  in  publishing  this  volume, 
the  committee  do  not  wish  to  be  understood  as 
being  responsible  for  the  views  expressed. 

Executive  Committee. 
Prof.  E.  P.  Gould,  D.D.,  Newton  Theological  Institution. 
Rev.  "William  M.  Baker,  D.D. 

President  Wm.  F.  Warren,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Boston  University. 
Prof.  L.  T.  TowNSEND,  D.D.,  Boston  University. 
Robert  Gilchrist. 

Rev.  Geo.  Z.  Gray,  D.D.,  Episcopal  Theol.  School,  Cambridge. 
Right  Rev.  Bishop  Paddock,  D.D. 
Prof.  E.  N.  Horsford. 

Prof.  J.  P.  Gulliver,  Andover  Theological  Seminary. 
Rev.  L.  B.  Bates. 
Rev.  J.  L.  WiTHROW,  D.D. 
Rev.  Bishop  Foster,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

Rev.  a.  J.  GORDON",  Chairman. 

B.  W.  Williams,  Secretary  and  Treasurer. 


CONTENTS. 


♦ 

•Page 

Preliminary  Lecture. — Methods  of  Meeting  Mod- 
ern Unbelief.     By  Joseph  Cook ix 

I.    The    Seen    and   the    Unseen.      By  Rt.   Rev. 

Thomas  M.  Clark,  D.D,  LL.D 1 

II.  Moral  Law  in  its  Relations  to  Physical  Sci- 
ence AND  to  Popular  Religion.  By  Presi- 
dent E.  G.  Robinson,  D.D.,  LL.D 31 

m 

III.  Christianity  and  the  Mental  Activity  of  the 

Age.     By  Rev.  Thomas  Guard,  D.D.      ...      61 

IV.  The    Place    of    Conscience.      By  Rev.   Mark 

Hopkins,  D.D 85 

V.  Development  :  Its  Nature  ;  What  it  Can  Do 
and  what  it  Cannot  Do.  By  Rev.  James 
McCosh,  D.D.,  LL.D 113 

VI.    A  Calm  View  of   the  Temperance  Question. 

By  Chancellor  Howard  Crosby,  D.D.,  LL.D.     .    141 

VIL    Old  and  New  Theologies.    By  Rev.  George  R. 

Crooks,  D.D.,  LL.D 175 

VIII.    Facts  as   to   Divorce   in   New  England.     By 

Rev.  Samuel  W.  Dike 197 

IX.    Significance    of    the    Historic    Element    in 

Scripture.     By  Rev.  J.  B.  Thomas,  D.D.  .    ■.    229 

X.    The  Theistic  Basis   of   Evolution.     By  Rev. 

John  Cotton  Smith,  D.D 285 


METHODS    OF    MEETING    MODERN 
UNBELIEF. 


Bt  JOSEPH  COOK. 


[TJBITBBSnT; 

PRELIMINARY    LECTURE. 

By  JOSEPH  COOK. 


METHODS    OF    MEETING    MODEEN" 
UNBELIEF. 

A  Lecture  delivered  in  the  Memorial  Hall,  Farringdon 
Street,  London,  November  2,  1880,  in  connection  with 
THE  Half-yearly  Meeting  of  the  London  Congrega- 
tional Union.  Henry  Wright,  Esq.,  J. P.,  in  the 
Chair. 


THE   PERILS   OF   GREAT   CITIES. 

/'^^SAR  could  not  drive  around  the  Eoman 
^-^  Empire  in  less  than  one  hundred  days;  we 
now  send  a  letter  around  the  globe  in  ninety-six. 
London  reaches  all  the  zones  as  easily  as  Eome 
reached  the  territories  of  Augustus.  You  remember 
there  was  a  day  when  a  traveller  might  start  from 
Alexandria,  in  Egypt,  and,  passing  over  the  substan- 
tial basaltic  pavement  of  the  old  Eoman  highways, 
drive  to  Carthage,  then  to  Gibraltar,  and  on  through 
Spain  and  France.  He  could  then  cross  the  Channel, 
drive  north  to  the  Scottish  Border,  return  and  go  to 
Cologne,  then  to  Milan,  then  under  the  shadows  of 
the  Alps  and  the  Balkans  to  Constantinople,  and  so 
to   Antioch   and   back   to  Alexandria,  —  a   distance 


XU        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

which  could  not  be  traversed  in  less  than  a  hundred 
days.  But  not  long  ago  there  came  a  collection  of 
more  than  three  hundred  mail-bags  from  Melbourne 
and  Sydney  to  San  Francisco ;  and  they  were  four 
days  ahead  of  time.  The  American  Government 
asked  the  directors  of  our  trans-continental  lines  to 
put  them  on  a  special  train.  They  reached  New  York 
in  six  days  from  San  Francisco ;  and  if  the  Arizona, 
the  speediest  steamship  afloat,  did  her  duty,  and  your 
officers  did  theirs,  these  mails  arrived  here  from  more 
than  half  around  the  globe  in  forty-one  days.  There 
are  no  foreign  lands. 

Sursu7n  corda  !  May  God  lift  up  our  hearts  to  the 
breadth  and  to  the  height  of  our  theme,  so  that  we 
may  not  take  provincial,  insular,  or  even  national 
views  only.  We  want  a  Christian  enterprise  that 
shall  at  least  fill  the  arms  of  England  and  America 
as  they  stretch  towards  the  sunrise  and  towards  the 
sunset.  Perhaps  God  means  to  keep  in  order  great 
portions  of  the  human  race  by  the  arms  of  England 
and  America  stretched  east  and  west,  and  ultimately 
locking  hands.  Only  in  this  way  can  we  obtain  a 
"  scientific  frontier." 

It  is  in  our  great  cities  that  we  are  attacked ;  and 
it  is  there  that  our  political  arrangements  are  receiv- 
ing their  greatest  strain.  We  are  more  and  more,  in 
the  United  States,  aware  of  the  perils  of  great  cities. 
When  you  spoke,  sir,  of  the  unmanageability  of  Lon- 
don, I  felt  that  in  America  we  have  more  cause  for 
fear  than  you.  New  York  is  a  village  yet,  I  know. 
When  the  bell  strikes  at  noon  in  New  York  City 


METHODS   OF   MEETING  MODERN   UNBELIEF.       Xlll 

there  are  about  a  million  and  a  half  of  people  within 
municipal  limits ;  and  in  greater  London  you  have 
four  millions  and  a  half.  But  we  have  not  annexed 
to  the  city  everything  within  twelve  miles  of  our 
centre,  as  you  have ;  we  shall  do  it  ultimately.  In 
two  centuries  there  will  be  a  London  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Hudson,  perhaps  another  where  Chicago  now 
stands,  and  possibly  a  third  at  San  Francisco.  When 
the  Duke  of  Wellington  was  in  this  city  of  the 
Thames,  he  could  rough-grind  his  sabres  and  ride 
down  a  mob.  We  cannot  do  that  in  New  York.  We 
must  manage  there  by  count  of  heads  and  clack  of 
tongues.  We  must  manage  by  ward  meetings  and 
a  multiplicity  of  party  influences,  often  so  complex 
that  the  average  citizen  does  not  understand  them, 
and  abstains  from  voting  out  of  disgust  or  despair. 
As  the  power  of  the  people  advances,  it  will  be  found 
out  ultimately  under  universal  suffrage  that  Chris- 
tianity is  the  only  safeguard  of  civil  liberty  on  both 
sides  the  sea.  In  a  State  filled  with  great  cities,  the 
only  safety  for  the  government  of  the  people  by  the 
people,  and  for  the  people  in  the  State,  is  to  be  found 
in  the  government  of  the  saints  by  the  saints,  and  for 
the  saints  in  the  Church. 

I  hold  that  it  has  been  demonstrated  by  the  ex- 
perience in  the  United  States  for  a  century  that  the 
separation  of  the  Church  from  the  State  has  not 
injured  either.  American  experience  proves  that  the 
separation  of  Church  and  State  prevents  the  State 
from  governing  the  Church,  but  does  not  prevent  the 
Church  from  governing  the  State.     It  was  the  con- 


XIV  CHEIST   AND   MODERN  THOUGHT. 

science  of  the  North  which  held  the  nation  np  to  its 
work  in  our  civil  war ;  and  if  of  late  we  have  been 
paying  our  national  debt,  if  the  American  con- 
science revolts  at  any  idea  of  repudiation,  if  the 
sober  American  people  are  to-day  bearing  taxes  as 
perhaps  no  equal  number  of  millions  ever  did  on  the 
^  globe  before,  —  it  is  because  of  the  conscientiousness 
and  the  sobriety  taught  by  a  free  Church  in  a  free 
State.  We  have  fifty  millions  of  people  already  in 
the  United  States ;  and  when  we  have  four  times  the 
present  population  of  Great  Britain  we  may  easily 
have  four  Londons,  and  God  knows  that  representa- 
tive government,  triumphant  elsewhere,  is  sufficiently 
strained  to-day  in  our  large  towns.  There  are  in  the 
United  States  fifty  millions  of  people,  and  about  five 
millions  are  church- members ;  but  if  we  had  not  one  in 
five  making  a  public  solemn  profession  of  Christianity, 
I  for  one  should  not  have  what  I  have  to-day, —  a  firm 
hope  that  the  future  of  government  of  the  people  by 
the  people  and  for  the  people  is  safe.  You  know  that 
I  do  not  recommend  Enolish  institutions  to  Amer- 
ica.  The  opinion  has  been  expressed  by  your  great 
statesman,  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  is  as  much  revered  in 
America  as  here,  that  neither  nation  prefers  the  in- 
stitutions of  the  other.  To  this  proposition  I  venture 
to  add  that  neither  would  do  well  now  to  exchange 
its  institutions  for  those  of  the  other.  It  is  better 
that  we  should  try  two  great  experiments.  But,  sir, 
I  believe  that  if  that  statesman  were  here  he  would 
justify  me  in  the  further  assertion  that  the  hope  of 
civil  liberty  in  Great  Britain,  and   in  your  empire 


METHODS   OF   MEETING  MODERN   UNBELIEF.        XV 

throughout  the  world,  rests,  as  surely  as  it  does  in  the 
United  States,  on  the^urity,  the  intelligence,  and 
the  activity  of  the  Christian  Cliurch3  The  nations  to 
which  we  are  admitted  by  the  growth  of  all  lines  of 
international  communication  depend  for  the  progress 
of  their  civil  liberties,  no  less  than  for  the  progress  of 
their  religious  and  intellectual  culture,  on  our  success 
in  these  two  great  experiments.  I  thank  God  that 
England  and  America  are  not  circumstanced  alike ; 
and  that,  if  one  fail,  the  other  may  keep  up  the  hope 
of  the  race.  Abraham  Lincoln  and  Prince  Albert  are 
possibly  now  looking  with  equal  interest  on  the  two 
experiments.  In  the  world  above  they  are  not  na- 
tional merely  any  more.  The  martyrs  who  perished 
on  this  spot  are  not  denominationalists  any  more. 
To-night  I  would  begin  by  casting  aside  utterly 
everything  merely  denominational,  everything  merely 
national ;  and  I  would  consider  myself  a  citizen  of 
a  world  now  no  larger  than  the  Eoman  Empire  was 
under  the  Caesars.  Religious  internationalism  makes 
all  members  of  Christendom  fellow-citizens.  The 
colossal  tasks  assigned  by  Providence  to  England 
and  America  can  be  performed  only  when  the  two 
nations  lock  hands. 

•      METHODS   OF   MEETING   MODERN  UNBELIEF. 

It  is,  of  course,  no  part  of  my  purpose  to-night  to  in- 
struct this  dignified  assembly,  in  the  presence  of  which  I 
ought  to  be  dumb ;  but  it  may  be  that  a  few  facts  con- 
cerning rationalism  in  the  United  States,  and  a  few 
glimpses  of  the  power  of  our  free  churches,  may  not  be 


XVI       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

without  their  worth,  as  the  testimony  of  a  stranger  to 
circumstances  within  his  observation  at  home. 

I  believe  that  the  trend  of  history  is  toward  the  en- 
largement of  civil  as  well  as  religious  liberty.  We  must 
learn  how  to  manage  men  when  they  all  think  for  them- 
selves. The  time  has  come  when  every  man  will  exercise 
his  judgment  for  himself,  and  when,  unfortunately,  not 
every  man  has  judgment  to  exercise.  Adolescent  culture 
of  the  masses  is  at  once  a  glory  and  a  peril  of  our  republi- 
can age.  This  is  the  chief  origin,  I  believe,  of  the  scepti- 
cism of  adolescent  culture,  which  in  our  time  is  the  most 
notorious.  We  are,  I  think,  troubled  now  less  than  we 
have  been  for  many  ages  with  the  scepticism  of  ex- 
perts. Mr.  Cobden  used  to  say  that  the  number  of 
y.  trained  infidels,  of  really  reasoned  sceptics  in  England 
among  the  working  classes,  especially  among  the  skilled 
operatives,  could  be  put  into  a  drawing-room.  I  venture 
to  say  that  the  number  of  infidels  in  the  United  States 
among  the  working  classes  who  can  give  a  reason  for  their 
unbelief,  that  would  bear  examination  under  the  micro- 
scope and  scalpel  of  scholarship,  could  be  put  into  any 
small  cabin  on  an  Atlantic  steamer,  and  that  in  the  roll- 
ing of  the  ship  there  would  be  very  much  danger  of  physi- 
cal injury  by  the  space  left  for  tliem  in  which  to  toss  to 
and  fro.  It  is  notorious  that  American  infidelity  of  the 
popular  species  publishes  very  little  that  is  worth  reading. 
There  is  almost  nothing  in  American  or  British  infidel 
publications  that  has  a  name  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlan- 
tic. Our  Theodore  Parker,  indeed,  whose  antislavery 
politics  deserved  all  honor,  has  been  much  read  in  Amer- 
ica and  here  ;  but  he  left  no  theological  school  behind  "Vl^ 
him  in  Boston.  Theodore  Parker  is  now  far  less  a  power 
in  Boston  than  he  was  ten  years  ago ;  he  was  then  far  less 


METHODS   OF   MEETING  MODERN   UNBELIEF.      XVll 

a  power  tlian  ten  previously.     He  represents  no  extensive 
or  permanent  movement  of  thought. 

We  have  learned  in  the  United  States,  by  our  experi- 
ence in  heterodoxy,  to  judge  it  not  so  much  by  the  men 
who  make  it,  as  by  the  men  it  makes.  We  have  had 
noble  men  revolting  from  Puritanism ;  we  have  had  a 
Socinian  secession  from  orthodoxy,  —  Boston  has  been  the 
centre  of  it ;  but  experience  shows  that  the  third  genera- 
tion of  rationalistic  negation,  on  the  line  of  the  Unitarian 
faith,  usually  becomes  far  more  rationalistic  than  the  first 
generation.  The  third  generation  of  Socinian  negation  is 
usually  rationalistic  in  the  extreme,  sometimes  infidel. 
You  drop  from  Channing  to  Theodore  Parker,  from  Theo- 
dore Parker  to  Frothingham,  from  Froth ingham  to  the 
incomprehensible  and  undescribable  !  You  arrive  at  last 
at  a  state  where  lax  teachers  have  no  gospel  to  preach ; 
they  become  simply  literary  men,  and  in  that  way  end 
their  career  as  defeated  propagandists  of  a  fallen  faith. 


To  run  rapidly  over  some  general  considerations  touch- 
ing this  immense  theme  of  the  methods  of  meeting  mod- 
em unbelief,  let  me  say,  in  the  first  place,  that  there  is  no 
modern  form  of  scepticism  which  may  not  he  exploded  hy  a 
fair  use  of  its  own  concessions. 

AGNOSTICISM. 

Take,  for  instance,  agnosticism,  and  what  are  its  con- 
cessions ]  Sir,  I  believe  agnosticism  to  be  about  half  of  it 
chaff  and  half  of  it  chaffing.  But  when  you  approach  its 
more  serious  representatives,  you  find  them  claiming  that 
they  are  a  sort  of  theists  ;  they  affirm  that  they  are  not 

h 


y\ 


XVlll  CHRIST   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT. 

atheists.     The  character  of  God  to  the  agnostic  is  as  un- 
known as  the  back  side  of  the  moon ;  but  I  have  a  right 
to   assert  that,  although   unknown,  that  side  exerts  an 
attraction  on  every  flashing  wave  of  all  the  great  oceans, 
and  has  its  power  as  well  as  any  part  of  the  orb  which  we 
can  behold.     We  are  indebted,  I  think,  to  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer,  in  this  country,  and  to  Mr.  John  Fiske,  the  most 
brilliant  Spencerian  in  the  United  States,   for  the  best 
representation    of  agnosticism.      I   suppose   I    need    not 
pause  to  justify  the  assertion  that  agnosticism  itself  ad- 
mits that  the  Great  First  Cause  is,  and  is  a  cause,  and  is 
omnipresent,  and  has  existed  from  eternity.     Thus  there 
are  four  things  known  about  this  Cause,  —  its  existence, 
its  power  or  causal  energy,  its  omnipresence,  its  eternity. 
But  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  will  tell  you  that  the  nature  of 
things  works  w^ell ;  he  will  tell  you  that  the  arrangement 
of  this  universe  is  such  that  the  right  has  immense  advan- 
•  tages  in  the  struggle  for  existence.     We  are  told  by  Mr. 
Arnold  that  there  is,  in  the  universe,  "  an  eternal  power, 
not  ourselves,    which   makes  for  righteousness."      Now, 
take  these  concessions,  and  what  follows  1     Why,  if  there 
be  no  personal   God,   but  simply  an  eternal  power,  not 
myself,  that  makes  for  righteousness,  then  I  must  learn 
to  love  what  that  power  loves,  and  hate  what  that  power 
hates,  or  it  is  ill  with  me. 

The  doctrine  that  we  need  to  love  what  the  Supreme 
Power  of  the  universe  loves,  and  hate  what  he  hates, 
stands  even  under  the  little  that  agnosticism  knows  about 
the  Primal  Cause,  omnipresent,  eternal,  and  everywhere 
making  for  righteousness.  If  I  make  for  unrighteousness, 
the  wheels  of  the  universe  are  against  me.  The  very 
nature  of  things  requires  that  I  shall  love  what  it  loves, 
and  hate  what   it  hates.     And  so  I  would  approach  all 


METHODS   OF  MEETING  MODERN   UNBELIEF.      XIX 

agnostics  on  the  basis  of  their  own  concessions,  and  afi5rm 
that  of  self-evident  necessity  men  cannot  have  harmoni- 
zation with  their  environment,  without  similarity  of 
feeling  with  the  Eternal  Somewhat  which  makes  for 
righteousness. 

THE   UNIVERSE   REVEALS   A   THINKER. 

Modern  science  has  shown  us  more  clearly  in  these  last 
ages  than  any  science  or  imagination  of  man  ever  showed 
us  before,  that  the  universe  is  full  of  thought.  All  nature 
bursts  with  fulness  of  evidence  that  it  is  arranged  on  a 
plan.  But  I  believe  it  is  a  self-evident  truth  that  there 
cannot  be  thought  without  a  thinker.  Wherever  we  find 
in  the  universe  thought  not  our  own,  we  may  be  sure  that 
there  is  a  Thinker  not  ourselves. 

The  universe  is  not  only  a  thing,  it  is  a  thought.  And 
it  is  one  thought.  The  broadest  and  most  vaunted  doc- 
trine of  physical  science  is  the  universality  and  inviola- 
bility of  law.  The  reign  of  law,  omnipresent,  eternal,  — • 
teach  it  as  much  as  you  please !  The  thought  that  is 
behind  the  reign  of  universal  and  unified  natural  law 
must  be  regarded  as  one ;  and  that  one  thought  I  hold  to 
be  the  outcome  and  proof  of  the  existence  of  one  Thinker, 
omnipresent,  eternal,  and  personal  as  is  the  thought.  A 
thinker  is  a  person.  That  Supreme  Somewhat  which,  as 
ths  blindest  agnostic  admits,  makes  for  righteousness  is 
thus  demonstrably  known  to  be  an  Eternal  Some  One 
who  makes  for  righteousness,  and  from  whom  we  cannot 
escape. 

THE   CHARACTER    OF   THIS    THINKER   IS    ASCERTAINABLE. 

You  have  been  told,  I  suppose,  that  the  absolute  and 
infinite  must  contain  everything,  or  else  they  are  not 


XX        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

absolute  and  infinite.  "To  define  God,"  said  Spinoza,  "is 
to  deny  him."  Now,  I  hold  that  it  is  certain  that  infinite 
space  is  space,  that  infinite  time  is  time,  that  infinite 
power  is  power,  that  infinite  knowledge  is  knowledge,  that 
infinite  goodness  is  goodness.  What  is  affirmed  in  calling 
the  Divine  attributes  of  power,  knowledge,  and  goodness 
infinite,  is  intelligible  and  involves  no  self-contradiction. 
Except  in  the  elements  of  infinity,  any  given  quality  is  the 
same  in  its  infinite  as  in  its  finite  development.  We  can- 
not adequately  conceive  of  the  quantity,  but  we  may  of 
the  quality  of  infinity.  What  is  inconsistent  with  good- 
ness will  be  inconsistent  with  infinite  goodness. 

Mr.  Mill  was  perfectly  right  in  saying,  except  that  his 
profaneness  should  have  been  omitted,  that  he  would  call 
no  being  good  who  is  not  what  he  means  when  he  applies 
the  epithet  to  his  fellow-creatures.  "If  such  a  being," 
said  Mr.  Mill,  "  can  sentence  me  to  hell  for  not  so  calling 
him,  to  hell  I  will  go."  There  was  an  earthquake  rent, 
and  into  this  chasm  the  whole  really  puerile  philosophy 
of  nescience,  I  believe,  will  be  ultimately  cast,  in  the 
name  of  logic,  and  with  the  acclamations  of  all  thinking 
men. 

This  unscientific  doctrine  of  agnosticism  has  very  little 
hold  on  what  calls  itself  culture  in  the  United  States. 
My  friend  Mr.  Fiske  is  a  brilliant  man  and  an  agnostic  ;  I 
speak  always  with  respect  of  his  honesty ;  but  he  is  to 
this  hour  plunging  in  the  Serbonian  bog  of  the  Spencerian 
philosophy.  Professor  Bowen,  a  profound  metaphysician 
and  devout  Christian  believer,  and  not  Mr.  Fiske,  repre- 
sents Harvard  University.  ^  ■  Professor  Bowen,  of  Harvard, 
President  Porter,  of  Yale,  and  President  McCosh,  of 
Princeton  College,  the  foremost  American  authorities  in 
philosophy,  are  all  vigorous  opponents  of  the  agnosticism 


METHODS   OF   MEETING   MODERN    UNBELIEF.       XXI 

of  the  Spencerian  school.  That  man  in  London  whose 
opinion  I  beheve  to  be  worth  more  than  that  of  any  other 
hving  Englishman  on  the  subject,  told  me  not  long  ago 
that  ho  believed  that  Spencer's  books  would  not  be  bought 
in  large  numbers  ten  years  after  his  death,  f(y^  yi^^^^^'  Aii^^l^ 

The  attributes  of  knowledge,  power,  and  goodness,  eacfi 
of  them  in  an  infinite  degree,  can  be  intelligibly  and  with- 
out self-contradiction  attributed  to  one  Thinker,  and  to 
but  one,  and  that  one  He  whose  thought  the  origination 
and  preservation  of  the  universe  exhibit.  Immense  dis- 
tinctions exist  between  the  Absolute  defined  as  the  unre- 
lated, or  that  which  exists  out  of  all  relations,  and  the 
Absolute  defined  as  the  independent,  or  that  which  exists 
out  of  one  set  of  relations,  that  is,  out  of  all  relations  of 
dependence.  It  is  in  the  latter  sense  only  that  scientific 
theism  asserts  that  the  One  Person  whose  existence  is 
proved  by  the  one  thought  of  the  imiverse  is  absolute. 
Great  distinctions  exist  between  the  Absolute  defined  as 
that  which  is  capable  of  existing  out  of  relation  to  any- 
thing else,  and  defined  as  that  which  is  incapable  of  exist- 
ing in  relation  to  anything  else.  It  is  in  the  'former  sense 
that  scientific  theism  calls  God  absolute.  It  is  in  the 
latter  that  Herbert  Spencer,  Mansel,  and  others,  who 
deny  that  we  can  prove  intellectually  that  God  is  a  per- 
son, call  God  absolute.  This  false  definition  overlooks 
the  distinction  between  infinite  and  all,  and  leads  Mansel 
to  Hegel's  conclusion, — that  God's  nature  embraces  every- 
thing, evil  included.  The  definition  which  Mansel  and 
Spencer  hold  is  repudiated  by  scientific  theism.  With 
that  repudiation,  all  the  alleged  difficulties  that  arise  from 
asserting  the  personality  of  God  vanish.  Herbert  Spencer 
and  his  school  admit  that  the  Eternal  Power,  not  our- 
selves, which  makes  for  righteousness  in  the  universe,  is 


XXU       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

omnipresent,  self-existent,  omnipotent,  and  in  this  sense 
infinite  and  absolute. 

In  a  recent  volume  of  most  searching  applications  of 
the  scientific  method  to  philosophical  thought,  Thomas 
Hill,  lately  President  of  Harvard  University,  writes  (The 
Natural  Sources  of  Philosophy,  p.  32) :  "  Spencer  says 
that  our  belief  in  an  Omnipresent  Eternal  Cause  of  the 
universe  has  a  higher  warrant  than  any  other  belief,  that 
is,  that  the  existence  of  such  a  Cause  is  the  most  certain 
of  all  certainties ;  but  asserts  that  we  can  assign  to  it  no 
attributes  whatever,  and  that  it  is  absolutely  unknown 
and  unknowable.  Yet,  in  his  very  statement  of  its  exist- 
ence, he  assigns  to  the  Ultimate  Cause  four  attributes,  — 
being,  causal  energy,  omnipresence,  and  eternity.  And 
afterwards  he  implicitly  assigns  to  it  two  other  attributes, 
repeatedly  expressing  his  faith  that  the  Cosmos  is  obe- 
dient to  law,  and  that  this  law  is  of  beneficent  result, 
which  is  an  implicit  ascription  of  wisdom  and  love  to  the 
Ultimate  Cause.  All  thinkers  concede  that  human  rea- 
son is  competent  to  discover  the  existence  of  an  Ultimate 
Cause,  to  form  the  inductions  of  its  being,  its  causal 
energy  or  power,  its  omnipresence,  and  eternity." 

The  intelligence,  the  unity,  and,  in  a  correct  sense,  the 
infinity,  of  the  Cause  of  the  universe  are,  therefore,  proved 
in  entire  harmony  with  the  scientific  method  on  the  one 
hand,  and  Christian  theism  on  the  other. 

It  is  the  business  of  the  Church  to  echo  God.  His 
voice  is  multiplex,  the  same  and  yet  different  from  age 
to  age,  and  unapologetic  from  eternity  to  eternity.  He 
cannot  be  patronized  ;  and  if  we  are  his  servants,  our  first 
duty  is  to  see  to  it  that  we  do  not  take  a  craven  and 
apologetic  attitude  before  the  pinched  physicism  which,  in 
A  our  age,  arrogates  the  titles  of  both  religion  and  science, 


METHODS   OF  MEETING  MODERN   UNBELIEF.       XXIU 

and  deserves  neither,  and  attempts  to  patronize  God  him- 
self, or  to  bow  him  out  of  the  universe  in  the  name  of 
agnosticism  and  atheism. 

This  is  a  transitional  age  of  adolescent  culture  for  the 
masses,  and  with  the  progress  of  popular  enlightenment 
much  of  our  crude  infidelity  will  pass  away. 

There  is  in  our  time  a  scepticism  of  the  dull-eyed,  and 
of  course  a  scepticism  of  the  wild-eyed,  but  the  worst 
scepticism  is  that  of  the  wall-eyed,  or  of  physicists,  and 
sometimes  of  philosophical  specialists,  who  will  see  noth- 
ing outside  their  own  particular  ranges  of  investigation, 
who  never  have  looked  at  religious  truth  scientifically, 
and  who,  indeed,  refuse  to  apply  to  the  truths  of  theology 
the  common  axioms  and  principles  which  they  are  con- 
stantly using  in  science  itself.  A  specialist  may  be  lynx- 
eyed  and  yet  wall-eyed.  We  must  force  the  wall-eyed  to 
the  conclusions  which  follow  from  self-evident  premises ; 
we  must  take  the  "  cans  "  and  "  cannots "  of  the  Bible, 
the  great  self-evident  propositions  of  religious  truth  based 
upon  axioms  which  all  scientific  methods  revere,  and  show 
that  those  "  cans  "  and  "  cannots  "  justify  us  in  asserting 
the  necessity  of  similarity  of  feeling  between  man  and 
God  as  required  by  the  new  birth,  and  the  necessity  of 
the  harmonization  of  man  with  his  past  as  required  by 
the  atonement. 

In  all  the  great  themes  of  our  modern  Christian  the- 
ology, there  is  hardly  a  controverted  question  which 
might  not  be  settled  by  an  appeal  to  the  self-evident 
truths  lying  behind  the  Biblical  "  cans "  and  "  cannots." 
Christ's  fears  for  man  were  that  he  would  not  be  delivered 
from  both  the  love  of  sin  and  the  guilt  of  it.  These  two 
fears  are  precisely  those  of  the  very  nature  of  things ;  for 
it  is  self-evident  that  without  harmony  with  God  and  con- 


XXIV      CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

science  and  our  record,  we  cannot  be  in  peace  with  our 
unescapable  environment.  These  two  fears  produced 
Christ's  bloody  sweat,  and  yet  he  conquered  both  fears 
without  adopting  any  belief  out  of  harmony  with  the 
nature  of  things.  He  attained  peace;  his  yoke  was  easy, 
his  burden  was  light.  But  only  he,  in  the  whole  history 
of  the  race,  and  such  as  have  followed  his  method,  have 
done  this.  The  method  of  Christ  and  the  secret  of  Christ 
are  historically  proved  to  be  the  only  sources  of  peace 
when  all  the  faculties  are  aroused  and  harmonized  with 
the  law  of  the  ascent  of  life.  Christianity,  therefore,  and 
it  only,  is  in  harmony  with  the  absolute  religion  or  the 
self-evident  truths  of  the  nature  of  things. 

It  is  the  joy  of  my  life  to  defend  what  I  call  axiomatic 
theology,  that  is,  the  cans  and  cannots  of  the  nature 
of  things  as  revealed  by  self-evident  truth.  Axiomatic 
theology  shows  that  mind  is  not  matter ;  it  thus  answers 
materialism.  It  demonstrates  that  death  does  not  end 
all,  even  if  it  cannot  prove  literal  immortality.  It  estab- 
lishes the  supremacy  of  conscience,  and  shows  that  we 
can  have  no  harmony  with  ourselves  until  we  acquire 
harmony  with  the  moral  law  pointed  out  by  the  moral 
sense,  and  with  the  God  who  is  behind  that  law,  and  with 
the  record  of  our  own  sins,  on  which  that  law  places 
greater  and  greater  emphasis  the  more  we  love  what  God 
loves  and  hate  what  he  hates.  Axiomatic  theology  thus 
applied  to  philosophy  is  the  uprooting  of  agnostic,  athe- 
istic, materialistic,  and  pessimistic  speculations.  As  ap- 
plied to  religious  truth,  axiomatic  theology  demonstrates 
."''>  the  necessity  of  similarity  of  feeling  with  God  to  peace  in 
his  presence.  Applied  to  our  record  in  the  past,  it  proves 
the  necessity  of  an  atonement ;  and  although  it  does  not 
pretend,  from  the  point  or  view  of  mere  reason,  to  prove 


METHODS   OF   MEPTING  MODERN  UNBELIEF.      XXV 

that  an  atonement  has  been  made,  it  does  establish  the 
certainty  that  an  atonement  is  needed,  and  therefore  the 
shallowness  of  all  schemes  of  thought  which  do  not  con- 
tain that  multiplex,  under-girding  truth,  encircling  the 
entire  universe  of  moral  speculation.  Axiomatic  theology 
points  out  the  law  of  the  ascent  of  life.  By  applying  that 
law  to  theology  and  ethics,  it  proves  that  the  soul,  with 
all  its  faculties  allowed  free  growth  and  action,  cannot 
have  peace  unless  it  is  harmonized  with  the  highest  in 
itself,  that  is,  with  conscience,  and  with  the  highest  in 
history,  that  is,  with  the  Christ.  There  is  thus  established 
a  philosophy  concerning  the  conditions  of  man's  peace, 
and  its  conclusions  from  self-evident  truth  are  entirely 
harmonious  with  the  Scriptures  themselves.  Axiomatic 
theology  can  be  systematized.  It  begins  with  principles 
of  common  sense,  taken  for  granted  in  legislation,  and 
behind  counters,  and  in  juries,  wherever  men  reason. 
Axiomatic  theology  can  be  preached  to  scholars ;  for  the 
supreme  principles  of  self-evident  truth  are  those  on 
"which  all  scholarship  depends  in  every  science.  Axio- 
matic theology  can  be  preached  to  the  people ;  for  self- 
evident  truth  is  that  which  underlies  the  proverbs  of  the 
nations,  and  is  the  basis  of  common  sense  everywhere. 

I  like  to  begin  by  planting  my  foot  on  axiomatic  the- 
ology, on  self-evident  propositions,  on  intuitions,  properly 
so  called ;  but  I  do  not  like  to  end  there. 

Far  be  it  from  me,  my  friends,  to  undervalue  forms  of 
Christian  effort  to  which  I  am  not  accustomed  myself. 
The  needs  of  the  people  are  very  diversified,  and  if  we 
echo  God,  I  am  very  sure  our  endeavor  to  supply  those 
needs  will  also  be  diversified.  Our  Lord  and  Saviour 
Jesus  Christ  not  only  was  but  is.  These  martyrs  of 
Smithfield  who  perhaps  hover  in  the  air  above  us  have 


XXVI      CHKIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

messages  for  us ;  and  from  all  the  fields  which  martyrs 
consecrated  in  the  British  Isles,  from  all  quarters  of  the 
world  where  Christians  have  had  their  triumphs,  souls 
seem  to  gather  around  us  with  messages  for  the  present 
hour.  But  where  is  the  Spirit  which  once  on  earth  spoke 
as  never  man  spake  ?  Where  is  Jesus  Christ  now  1  Our 
Christology,  of  course,  includes  the  organizing  and  re- 
demptive doctrine  that  the  Holy  Spirit  is  shed  forth  by 
our  Lord.  It  was  said  at  Pentecost,  "  He  hath  shed  forth 
this."  Our  Lord  hath  yet  many  things  to  say  to  us  of 
London  and  of  Boston.  If  we  follow  the  mind  of  the 
Spirit,  we  shall  utter  to  our  age  our  secret  convictions. 
If  we  follow  the  impulse  of  the  finger  of  the  Spirit  upon 
our  souls,  as  we  are  differently  trained  by  God's  provi- 
dence and  by  this  constant  touch  of  Christ's  pierced  right 
hand,  we  shall  utter  messages  so  diversified  as  to  meet 
the  diversified  wants  of  our  age. 

The  small  philosopher's  rule  is  to  guess  at  the  half  and 
multiply  by  two.  He  is  a  very  great  character  in  modern 
history,  and  is  likely  to  be  a  greater  one  as  democratic 
influences  progress  in  the  world  for  good  or  evil.  We 
cannot  avoid  the  dangers  of  the  day  of  small  things  of 
popular  knowledge.  We,  therefore,  need  to  tell  the  peo- 
ple all  we  know.  The  time  has  come  when  all  that  any- 
body knows  on  great  and  vital  themes,  everybody  should 
know.  A  small  draught  from  the  Pierian  spring  is  un- 
doubtedly a  dangerous  thing,  but  the  remedy  for  it  is  a 
deeper  draught.  The  danger  of  the  diffusion  of  a  little 
knowledge  must  be  met  by  more  knowledge.  In  the 
present  day  the  need  of  the  time  is  that  the  esoteric 
should  become  the  exoteric,  and  the  convictions  of  scholars 
a  possession  of  the  masses. 

The  truth  I  suppose  to  be,  not  that  we  cannot  know 


METHODS   OF   MEETING   MODERN   UNBELIEF.     XXVll 

anything  of  God,  but  that  we  cun  know  a  little,  and  that 
this  little  is  enough  for  practical  purposes.  I  believe  that 
the  twentieth  century  will  teach,  not  agnosticism,  but 
what  I  love  to  call  miognosticism,  or  the  doctrine  that  we 
can  know  a  little  of  God,  and  not  that  we  can  know  noth- 
ing of  him.  My  conviction  is  that  it  is  our  duty  to  lift 
up  over  against  the  hardy,  arrogant  agnosticism  of  our 
times  the  by  no  means  arrogant  or  extravagant,  but  cool 
and  scientific  doctrine  of  miognosticism,  which  is  likely  to 
be  the  doctrine  of  enlightened  future  times. 

NECESSITY    OF    AN    ATONEMENT. 

In  the  concession  of  agnosticism  that  there  is  an  Omni- 
present, Eternal  Power  which  makes  for  righteousness, 
we  find  no  release  from  the  doctrine  of  the  new  birth. 
Had  I  time,  I  sjiould  endeavor  to  show  also  that  while 
that  power  enswathes  us,  we  can  find  no  release  from  the 
doctrine  of  the  necessity  of  an  atonement.  I  believe  if 
the  nature  of  things  makes  for  righteousness,  and  if  I  have 
a  black  record  behind  me  in  the  past,  that  record  which  I 
must  face  while  I  continue  to  exist  will  be  a  source  of 
dissonance  between  me  and  my  environment.  I  believe 
as  thoroughly  as  that  I  exist  that  my  environment  must 
be  made  up  of  my  own  faculties  and  of  my  record  in  the 
past,  and  of  an  Omnipresent  First  Cause  which  makes  for 
righteousness.  How  am  I  to  be  harmonized  with  that 
environment]  It  is  self-evident  that  without  similarity 
of  feeling  with  this  Power  I  can  have  no  harmonization 
•with  It,  for  two  cannot  walk  together  unless  they  are 
agreed.  I  hold  also  that  without  a  screen  let  down 
between  me  and  my  black  past,  I  can  have  no  harmony 
with  that  portion  of  my  environment.  On  all  who  admit 
that  there  is  a  Power,  not  ourselves,  which  makes  for 


XXViii  CHRIST   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT. 

righteousness,  a  merciless  necessity  of  thought  forces  the 
admission  of  necessity  of  similarity  of  feeling  with  that 
Power,  and  of  some  great  arrangement  by  which  we  can 
be  screened  from  a  past  which  is  irreversible  and  inerasa- 
ble.  There  are  more  things  in  the  nature  of  things  than 
have  ever  been  dreamt  of  in  our  philosophy. 

On  the  basis  of  mere  positivism  and  secularism,  be- 
lieving in  nothing  but  the  nature  of  things,  I  would  assert 
that  similarity  of  feeling  with  God  is  demonstrably  ne- 
cessary to  peace  in  his  presence  ;  or,  in  the  language  of  the 
positivists,  to  love  what  the  nature  of  things  loves  and  to 
hate  what  it  hates,  is  demonstrably  necessary  to  our  har- 
monization with  our  environment.  Let  us,  then,  empha- 
size these  concessions,  and  bring  those  who  make  them 
into  such  a  mood  of  seriousness  as  will  at  last  enable  them 
to  lift  up  their  eyes  to  inferences  far  above  their  present 
low  plane  of  intellectual  attainment. 

DOES    DEATH    END    ALhl 

If  I  were  to  approach  a  positivist  who  denies  that 
there  is  any  existence  for  the  soul  after  death,  I  believe 
that  I  should  find  him  iniable  to  prove  that  organization 
begins  everything  in  our  human  existence ;  but  if  he  can- 
not prove  that,  how  does  he  know  that  disorganization  ends 
everything]  Organization  implies  an  organizing  power, 
and  that  power  must  go  before  its  own  effects.  We  are 
*'  woven  by  something  not  ourselves,"  as  Tyndall  says. 
What  is  the  cause  of  form  in  organisms  1  There  must 
be  a  cause,  and  if  organization  does  not  begin  all,  but 
is  itself  begun,  no  positivist,  no  secularist,  no  man  of 
merely  great  adeptness  in  the  physicist's  portions  of  in- 
vestigation, —  I  will  not  call  these  portions  science,  I  call 
them  a  pinched  physicisra,  —  no  man  of  that  department 


METHODS    OF    MEETING    MODERN    UNBELIEF.        XXIX 

has  a  riglit  to  assert  that  disorganization  ends  all.  The 
thing  that  goes  before  organization  may  live  after  disor- 
ganization, and  that  may  prove  that  death  does  not  end  all. 
And  so  I  would  say  to  the  sceptic,  As  you  do  not  know- 
that  death  ends  all,  make  preparation  for  that  unseen 
world  in  which  no  doubt  the  laws  of  the  nature  of  things 
are  to  be  what  they  are  here ;  make  preparation  to  walk, 
while  you  have  your  existence,  with  a  Being  or  with  a  na- 
ture of  things  which  you  cannot  be  harmonized  with  unless 
you  make  for  righteousness  as  it  does. 

These  are  plain,  straightforward  concessions  of  the 
worst  school  of  reasoned  sceptics,  and  I  hold  that  it  is  very 
important  for  the  Christian  pulpit  to  seize  upon  these 
outlying  portions  of  the  fortress  of  rationalism,  and  show 
that  whoever  takes  them  can  take  the  citadel  at  last. 
There  are  no  outlying  fortresses  of  rationalism  well  pro- 
tected ;  we  can  enter  the  outlying  forts  almost  without 
the  loss  of  a  man  ;  indeed,  our  spies  are  talking  to  each 
other  constantly  on  the  borders  between  our  two  armies. 
Let  the  talk  be  sometimes  courteous,  sometimes  friendly, 
never  apologetic  on  our  part,  and  when  we  get  a  hearing 
let  us  stand  on  the  outposts  and  take  the  citadel. 

II. 

Another  method  of  meeting  modern  infidelity  is  to  in- 
sist on  distinctness  and  verifiahleness  of  definitions.  The  very 
worst  disease  in  the  blood  and  bones  of  what  calls  itself 
liberalistic  thought  in  our  time  is  vagueness  of  definition. 
Our  vague  literary  rationalism  rarely  attempts  to  define 
its  chief  terms,  but  drifts  from  fog  bank  to  fog  bank 
across  the  seas  of  discussion,  making  its  protection  very 
often  the  vapor  itself.      This  has  been  the  difficulty  of 


XXX       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

Unitarianism  in  the  United  States ;  it  was  the  difficulty 
of  Theodore  Parker ;  it  was  the  difficulty  of  Mr.  Emerson, 
who  so  lately  was  a  pantheist,  and  who  to-day,  as  I  thank 
God  for  being  able  to  affirm,  is  a  theist.  He  allows  his 
friends  to  call  him  a  Christian  theist.  Mr.  Emerson,  who 
began  his  career  as  more  or  less  pantheistic,  has  of  late 
been  assisting  his  neighbor,  Mr.  Alcott,  in  conducting  a 
summer  school  of  philosophy  at  Concord,  which  teaches 
theism,  and  carries  its  doctrines  almost  up  to  the  verge 
of  Christianity.  That  school  is  full  of  mistrust  of  posi- 
tivism, of  agnosticism,  and  of  all  those  forms  of  speculation 
which  do  not  take  an  integral  view  of  the  universe. 

All  fractional  schemes  of  thought  science  itself  will 
ultimately  distrust,  and  it  will  be  found  that  of  all  views 
of  the  universe  the  Biblical  is  the  least  fractional. 

Mr.  Emerson  said  lately  to  Mr.  Alcott,  and  the  latter 
reported  the  words  before  fifty  ladies  and  gentlemen  in 
my  parlor  in  Boston  :  "  If  you  wish  to  call  me  a  Chris- 
tian theist,  you  have  my  authority  to  do  so,  and  you  must 
not  leave  out  the  word  '  Christian,'  for  to  leave  that  out 
is  to  leave  out  everything."  Mr.  Emerson's  is  the  only 
eminent  name  that  was  quoted  in  America  in  support  of 
rationalism,  and  to-day  it  can  be  quoted  in  support  of  the- 
ism, although  I  do  not  dare  yet  call  Emerson  exactly  a 
Christian  theist,  in  spite  of  his  calling  himself  so. 


III. 

Another  method  of  meeting  modern  unbelief  is  to  point 
out  the  practical  character  of  unsound  schemes  of  thought, 
and  what  infidelity  'usually  becomes  in  the  third  generation. 

Is  there  an  infidel  book  in  the  world  that  any  serious 
man  wants  for  a  dying  pillow  %     I  look  north,  south,  east, 

'1c^ 


/' 


METHODS   OF   MEETING   MODERN   UNBELIEF,       XXXI 

and  west  for  such  a  volume.  I  look  to  the  thirty-two 
points  of  the  compass  for  any  infidel  book  a  hundred  years 
old,  yet  holding  its  own  among  scholars.  I  find  no  such  ■> 
volume.  I  do  not  want  for  my  dying  pillow  any  book  of  {^^ 
Strauss  or  Renan,  any  more  than  of  Voltaire.  I  have  seen 
the  decadence  of  the  negations  of  Strauss,  and  I  believe 
that  we  shall  live  to  see  the  decadence  of  some  arrogant 
philosophies  which  to-day  underlie  infidelity.  Who  is 
there  here,  above  fifty  years  of  age,  who  does  not  remem- 
ber the  time  when  Hegel  was  the  great  authority  in  Ger- 
many, and  was  quoted  in  support  of  rationalism  1  Who 
does  not  remember  when  that  great  man,  John  Stuart 
Mill,  was  such  an  authority  that  to  differ  from  him  was 
almost  as  much  as  one's  intellectual  reputation  was  worth  'i 
But  you  know  that  to-day,  since  the  publication  of  his 
Autobiography,  that  philosophic  authority  of  his  has 
waned ;  and  now  Professor  Jevons  is  telling  us  we  must 
look  yet  further  before  we  find  logical  infallibility.  As 
these  men  have  waxed  and  waned,  so  some  who  now  fill 
the  ears  of  the  world  with  rationalistic  speculations  will 
■wax  and  wane.  We  shall  ultimately,  out  of  our  wrecks 
in  philosophy,  come  to  a  profounder  reverence  for  the  Bib-  : 
lical  view  of  the  world  as  itself  the  best  philosophy. 
What  works  well,  age  after  age,  is  likely  to  be  the  truth. 
There  is  no  unsound  scheme  of  thought  which  does  work 
well  ^Yhen  transmuted  into  life  ;  and,  therefore,  the  stern- 
est judge  of  error  is  its  reduction  to  practice. 

IV. 

Of  all  methods  of  meeting  unbelief,  the  most  efficient 
is,  in  my  judgment,  the  famous  scientific  one,  —  repeated 
and  2^rolonged  experiment. 


XXXll  CHRIST   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT. 


PRAYER. 

Who  here  is  willing  to  try,  for  example,  the  experiment 
of  testing  whether  prayer  really  has  an  answer'?  It  is 
written  in  the  Book  which  is  an  authority  in  Christendom, 
that  God  is  more  willing  to  give  his  Holy  Spirit  to  those 
who  ask  him  for  it  than  fathers  are  to  give  bread  to  their 
children.  What  is  prayer  1  It  has  commonly  been  taught 
that  prayer  consists  of  four  parts,  —  adoration,  confession, 
thanksgiving,  petition.  I  love  to  teach  that  it  consists  of 
five  parts,  —  adoration,  confession,  thanksgiving,  petition, 
and  total  self-surrender.  Any  prayer  that  has  .not  in  the 
petition,  "  Thy  will  be  done,"  is  mere  vain  repetition. 
Where  is  the  sceptic  that  dares  try  the  experiment  of 
prayer  in  that  sense,  and  see  whether  the  Holy  Spirit  will 
be  given  to  him  or  not  1  A  man  is  not  manly  who  vaunts 
that  he  believes  in  the  scientific  method  and  will  not  test 
it.  You  believe  that  experiment  is  the  test  of  all  truth, 
and  that  the  scientific  method  must  prevail.  England, 
Germany,  and  the  United  States  are  very  well  agreed  in 
their  best  cultured  circles  that  inductive  experiment  must 
be  applied  to  theology  as  well  as  to  all  other  themes. 
Reverence  for  proof,  clear  ideas  at  any  cost,  obedience  the 
organ  of  spiritual  knowledge,  are  the  great  points  in  the 
creed  of  all  true  culture.  Our  century  believes  in  making 
known  to  everybody  all  that  is  thoroughly  known  by  any- 
body. The  Church  is  anxious  that  even  the  truths  of 
y  Christianity  should  be  tested  by  merciless  experiment. 
Take  the  doctrine  of  prayer  in  all  its  five  parts,  and  try 
an  experiment  with  it.  I  hold  it  to  be  a  truth  of  experi- 
ence, that  whoever  yields  himself  utterly  to  God  receives 
at  the  instant  of  surrender  an  inner  illumination  unob- 
tainable in  any  other  way.     I  hold  that  this  experiment, 


METHODS   OF  MEETING   MODERN   UNBELIEF.      XXXIII 

repeated  age  after  age  in  innumerable  personal  careers, 
has  never  once  been  repeated  without  success. 

IS   THERE   ANOTHER    PROBATION    AFTER  DEATH  1 

I  am  willing  to  test  modern  latitudinarianism  within  the 
Church  itself  by  experiment.  We  are  told  that  there  is  to 
be  opportunity  for  repentance  after  death.  We  are  told 
that  extinction  is  to  overtake  ultimately  the  incorrigibly 
wicked.  Is  any  man,  as  a  practical  experiment,  willing  to 
be  incorrigibly  wicked,  and  take  his  chance  as  to  extinc- 
tion 1  Eternal  hope,  we  are  told,  is  before  us,  whatever 
we  do.  There  will  be  opportunity  of  repentance  after 
death,  say  some  revered  men ;  but  are  these  men  willing 
to  trust  their  own  chances  of  eternal  peace  to  the  oppor- 
tunity of  repentance  after  death  1  That  is  a  practical 
experiment  for  you,  and  the  application  of  the  scientific 
method  which  you  revere  to  this  department  of  religious 
research. 

Thomas  Corwin,  governor  of  Ohio,  was  renowmed  for  his 
quick  retorts.  He  once  met  a  negro  who  had  fled  from 
Kentucky,  and  whom  he  had  known  in  that  slave  State. 
The  negro  had  left  friends  and  a  comfortable  home,  and 
in  Oliio  was  dressed  in  rags.  The  governor  said  to  the 
negro,  "  Were  you  not  well  treated  in  Kentucky  by  your 
master  1 "  "  Yes."  "  Did  you  not  have  other  friends 
there,  and  clothing  and  food  enough  1 "  "Always."  "Well, 
then,"  said  the  governor,  "  I  must  say  you  made  a  mis- 
take in  running  away."  "Governor  Corwin,"  said  the 
negro,  "  the  situation  in  Kentucky  is  open  with  all  its  ad- 
vantages, and,  if  you  like  it,  you  can  go  and  occupy  it." 
We  are  told  by  a  few  of  the  representatives  of  circles  of 
society,  of  whose  culture  and  seriousness  I  must  speak 
with  respect,  that  it  is  a  barbaric  doctrine  to  teach  that 


XXXiV  CHRIST  AND   MODERN   THOUGHT. 

character  tends  to  a  final  permanence,  good  or  bad,  and 
that,  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  a  final  permanence  can 
come  but  once.  Without  ushig  the  scriptural  argument 
at  all,  I  beg  leave  to  say  to  any  man  who  teaches  this 
doctrine  of  repentance  after  death,  "  The  situation  is  open 
N<  with  all  its  advantages.  Do  you  purpose  to  go  and  oc- 
cupy it  1 "  Not  he,  not  I,  not  you,  if  we  are  in  our  senses. 
What  I  dare  not,  and  will  not,  do  for  myself,  I  will  not 
recommend  to  others. 

Christianity  includes  all  ethics ;  it  is  a  philosophy,  it  is 
an  art,  it  is  a  science^  it  is  a  revelation  of  the  nature  of 
things  in  which  there  is  no  variableness  or  shadow  of  turn- 
ing. But  it  is  more  and  better,  —  it  is  a  life  in  God's  love 
and  strength.  Permeated  everywhere  with  the  doctrine 
of  the  new  birth  and  the  atonement,  and  also  by  the  truth 
that  character  tends  to  a  final  permanence,  good  or  bad, 
and  that  a  final  permanence  can  come  but  once,  Chris- 
tianity has  for  its  central  thought  the  personal  love  of  a 
holy  infinite  Personality  revealed  both  in  nature  and  in 
revelation  as  Redeemer  and  as  Lord,  and  of  love  for  that 
Person  as  the  only  possible  means  of  purifying  the  world. 
Behold  in  him  a  Redeemer,  and  you  become  glad  to  take 
him  as  Lord.  Look  on  the  Cross,  and  it  becomes  no-  cross 
to  bear  the  cross.  God  as  an  atoning  God,  God  revealed 
in  history  as  at  once  Saviour  and  King,  God  revealed  in 
our  Lord  and  now  moving  the  world  through  the  Holy 
Spirit  and  moving  it  as  both  Redeemer  and  Lord,  the  ac- 
ceptance of  that  God  first  as  Redeemer  and  then  utter 
affectionate  submission  to  him  as  Lord,  the  personal  love 
of  Infinite  Perfection  as  a  regenerating  passion,  —  this  is 
the  beautiful  and  awful,  which  has  triumphed,  and  will 
continue  to  triumph. 


METHODS  OF  MEETING  MODERN  UNBELIEF.      XXXV 


V. 

It  is  high  time  that  we  should  turn  from  the  general  to 
some  of  the  special  methods  of  meeting  modern  unbelief, 
and  I  hope  you  will  bear  with  me  if  I  suggest  arrange- 
ments already  well  known  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic. 

A    MODERN    NECESSITY. 

The  first  of  these  is  the  foundation  of  professorships  in 
our  theological  colleges  on  the  relation  of  Christianity  to 
science.  I  believe  this  suggestion  will  not  be  a  novel  nor 
an  unwelcome  one  to  the  scholars  in  this  audience,  and 
certainly  not  to  theological  teachers.  I  hope  they  will  find 
it  in  the  line  of  modern  Christian  development  to  found 
such  professorships,  some  of  which  exist  in  England  al- 
ready, in  the  shape  of  lectureships,  renowned  throughout 
the  world  for  the  products  which  they  have  given  from 
time  to  time  to  the  nations  for  the  strengthening  of 
Christian  faith.  But  we  are  resolved  in  the  United  States 
to  meet  the  demands  of  our  young  men  in  theological 
schools  for  equipment  in  scientific  armor.  It  is  no  purpose 
of  a  theological  professor  who  teaches  the  relations  of 
Christianity  to  science,  to  know  the  materia  medica.  He 
does  not  expect  to  be  a  practical  chemist,  biologist,  as- 
tronomer, or  geologist.  His  business  is  to  study  each 
vessel,  so  to  speak,  every  ship  in  the  fleet  of  the  sciences 
along  the  line  between  wind  and  water.  Where  science 
and  Christianity  meet,  he  must  understand  them  both, 
and  so  his  task  is  not  one  out  of  all  proportion  to  human 
powers.  We  have  appointed  in  the  oldest  theological 
seminary  of  the  United  States  a  professor  to  discuss 
the   relations  of  Christianity  to   science,  and   have  put 


XXXVl      CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

$50,000  behind  him.  That  has  been  done  in  Massachu- 
setts, at  Andover  Theological  Seminary,  the  most  mossy 
and  mediaeval  of  all  our  theological  institutions,  as  its 
enemies  would  say;  but  mediseval  and  mossy  as  it  is, 
Andover  dares  to  expend  £10,000  to  teach  the  relations  of 
Christianity  to  science.  Where  is  the  rationalistic  profes- 
sorial chair  that  in  any  way  compares  for  intellectual  dig- 
nity in  the  United  States  with  the  chair  thus  founded  at 
Andovei-'J  Princeton  has  a  theological  professorship  of 
this  kind ;  the  Union  Seminary  in  New  York  has  a  lec- 
tureship of  similar  character.  It  has  been  my  fortune  for 
five  years  to  stand  in  Boston,  or  to  move  to  and  fro 
through  the  northern  cities  of  the  Union,  and  to  discuss 
the  relations  of  Christianity  to  science ;  and  the  demand 
for  even  poor  discussion  like  mine  shows  what  the  de- 
mand would  be  for  good  discussion,  if  you  had  it.  I  do 
not  magnify  myself,  but  I  do  magnify  this  glorious  office 
of  discussing  the  relations  of  Christianity  to  science,  and 
I  affirm  that  if  you  had  a  dozen  men  in  England,  and  if 
we  had  a  dozen  men  in  the  United  States,  adapted  to  the 
work  which  I  have  been  endeavoring  to  do,  and  have  done 
so  poorly,  we  could  shake  the  foundations  of  rationalism 
on  both  sides  the  sea,  within  one  generation.  You  cannot 
expect  your  pastors  to  make  a  specialty  of  this  theme. 
You  cannot  expect  the  professors  of  dogmatic  theology  or 
ecclesiastical  history  to  do  this  in  your  theological  col- 
leges. It  is  altogether  too  m.uch  to  put  upon  one  man,  to 
make  him  a  pastor,  a  preacher,  and  a  lecturer  on  Chris- 
tianity and  science  besides.  We  must  subdivide  our  work 
and  diversify  it,  and  so  meet  the  exigencies  of  the  times. 
As  there  is  now  such  a  demand  for  knowledge  concerning 
the  relation  of  Christianity  to  science,  why  not  develop 
the  Church  in  response  to  a  providential  call  as  she  has 


METHODS   OF  MEETING  MODERN   UNBELIEF.      XXXVll 

been  developed  again  and  again  in  her  equipment  in  times 
past  1  Why  not  meet  the  demand  of  the  hour  by  a  meas- 
ure for  the  hour? 

THEOLOGICAL  STUDENTS   NEED   MORE  THOROUGH   EQUIPMENT. 

What  would  I  have  besides  1  Let  me  say  that  some  of 
us  who  have  had  in  our  American  theological  colleges  three 
years  of  instruction  have  felt  that  we  needed  a  fourth  7/ear. 
I  would  not  have  a  fourth  year  for  all  theological  students, 
but  only  for  som^.  The  fourth  year  I  would  ask  should  be 
not  for  all  theological  students,  but  for  those  who  elect  it. 
Preaching  by  students  should  be  allowed  in  the  fourth 
year,  but  not  in  the  first  three  years  to  students  who 
enter  for  the  fourth.  The  larger  portion  of  the  fourth 
year  should  be  devoted  to  perfecting  work  on  the  most 
important  topics  of  the  doctrinal  department.  It  should 
include  space  for  larger  attention  to  metaphysics,  history, 
and  physical  science,  and  the  current  forms  of  infidelity. 
It  should  give  enlarged  instruction  in  respect  to  all  prac- 
tical religious  effort. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  one  reason  why  the  Church 
is  weak  is,  that  it  is  often  fed  on  guesses.  Still  worse,  in 
certain  departments  where  it  needs  most  strength,  the 
Church  is  not  fed  at  all,  or,  if  fed,  is  not  exercised  at  all. 
The  scepticism  of  the  land  fattens  on  the  crudity  of  the 
pulpit  and  the  inactivity  of  church-members. 

The  chief  topics  of  theology  are  inherently  so  important 
that  no  mistake  concerning  them  can  be  so  small  as  not 
to  be  colossal.  And  yet,  on  such  topics  —  the  fact  of  a 
revelation,  the  Deity  of  Him  from  whom  all  the  years  of 
time  are  numbered,  the  mysteries  of  election,  liite,  and  free- 
will—  we,  to  whom  a  college  course  gives  hardly  a  trace 
of  theological  instruction,  and  who  now  know  that  our 


XXXVIU    CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

knowledge  of  theology  derived  from  other  sources  previous 
to  our  studies  here  was  superticiiil  and  fragmentary  to  a 
sometimes  ludicrous  extreme,  are  asked  to  form  opinions 
in  the  course  of  three  years'  investigation,  one  year  of 
which  is  devoted  to  evangelical  and  one  to  historical  and 
rhetorical  branches,  the  third  year  broken  by  permitted 
absences  for  preaching,  not  absolutely  excessive,  indeed, 
since  they  are  an  important  method  of  training  adopted 
by  one  of  the  most  important  departments  of  the  course, 
but  which  are  relatively  excessive,  because,  in  a  course  of 
but  three  years,  they  are  necessarily  premature,  since 
they  are  such  as  to  reduce  the  whole  term  of  study,  in  re- 
spect to  the  matter  to  be  preached,  practically  to  two 
years  and  a  half;  and,  on  the  basis  of  this  amount  of  at- 
tention to  what  are  assuredly  the  most  difficult  and  awful 
of  the  problems  the  human  mind  is  permitted  to  reach, 
we  are  asked  to  commit  ourselves,  in  effect,  for  life,  to  cer- 
tain opinions,  and  go  out  and  stand  beside  the  pillows  of 
the  dying,  and  put  beneath  them  those  opinions,  not  as 
guesses  but  as  proofs.  An  honest  man  recoils  when  so 
much  is  asked  of  him.  It  is  by  no  means  expected  that 
in  three  years  w^e  can  master  the  whole  range  of  theology. 
But  w^e  are  expected  to  have  mastered  its  strategic  points. 
On  these  we  are  officially  asked,  in  wholly  informal  yet 
definite  terms,  to  express  before  examining  councils  what 
we  hold  for  ourselves,  not  what  we  have  been  taught. 
Upon  these  gi'eatest  points  at  least,  which,  however,  can- 
not be  explored  to  the  bottom  without  an  examination  of 
very  nearly  all  the*  rest,  we,  as  educated  men  and  future 
public  teachers,  are  called  to  express  independent  opinions. 
We  are  expected  to  become  so  clear  as  to  be  in  no  sense 
uncandid.  It  is  expected  that  we  will  do  this  in  the  train- 
ing of  nine  months'  special  doctrinal  study,  and  in  the  col- 


METHODS   OF   MEETING   MODERN   UNBELIEF.      XXXIX 

lateral  reading  of  perhaps  four  months  more.  We  do 
not  do  it.  We  cannot  do  it.  And  yet  this  is  the  most 
accredited  entrance  to  the  ministry.  The  greatness  of 
the  topics  of  theology  ought  to  secure  their  thorough 
treatment.  The  greatness  and  difficulty  of  the  topics  of 
theology  demand  an  extension  of  the  term  of  professional 
theological  study.  I  claim  a  fourth  year  of  study  in  the 
courses  of  the  theological  seminaries,  in  order  that  we 
may  have  time  to  be  honest. 

The  Christian  evidences  and  ethics  are,  indeed,  now 
taught  in  college,  but  so  hurriedly  as  to  make  little  im- 
pression upon  any  except  those  who  have  a  peculiar  taste 
for  them,  or  anticipate  study  in  a  professional  theological 
course.  Once  out  of  college,  those  students  who  pursue 
law,  medicine,  art,  science,  or  literature,  become  absorbed 
in  their  special  fields  of  investigation.  Once  in  their  pro- 
fessions, they  are  still  more  absorbed.  It  is  sometimes 
loosely  said  that  no  lawyer  in  full  practice  ever  reads  a 
book. 

Only  those  few  who  have  a  taste  for  theological  study 
ever  take  it  up.  More  than  half  of  ordinary  college  classes 
understand  metaphysics  too  poorly  ever  to  be  able  to  take 
up  the  severer  forms  of  theological  reading.  The  result  is, 
that  while  in  the  days  of  Edwards  all  liberally  educated 
men,  as  such,  had  some  knowledge  of  theology,  now  no 
liberally  educated  man,  as  such,  has  necessarily  any 
knowledge  of  it.  The  knowledge  of  theology  as  a  system 
is  confined  to  those  who  study  theology  professionally. 

Some  of  the  classes  in  society,  best  educated  in  every 
other  respect,  are  the  least  well  educated  in  regard  to 
theological  truth.  I  mean  no  disrespect  to  members 
ftf  the  honorable  professions  of  law  and  medicine,  when 
I  say  that  these  classes   constitute   the   best   materials 


Xl  CHRIST  AND   MODERN  THOUGHT. 

society  contains  for  the  formation  of  crude  parties  in 
theology. 

The  information  of  the  people  in  regard  to  theological 
and  religious  questions  has  not  kept  pace  with  its  advance 
as  to  secular  truths.  Without  this  distinction  of  its  two 
parts,  the  growth  of  knowledge  among  the  people  might 
seem  to  have  utterly  inexplicable  relations  to  the  religious 
phenomena  of  the  times.  The  world  is,  indeed,  becoming 
more  enlightened,  but  not  with  equal  rapidity  in  all  re- 
spects. The  disparity  between  the  degrees  of  advance  of 
secular  and  religious  intelligence  is  a  fearful  gap  in  the 
joints  of  the  harness  of  truth  at  which  scepticism  strikes. 

The  most  disastrous  criticism  of  the  pulpit  is  that  it 
skips  difficulties.  The  skipping  of  difficulties  brings 
swiftly  the  charge  of  disingenuousness  ;  and  that  charge 
hangs  invisible  in  the  secret  thought  of  men,  over 
more  pulpits  to-day  than  we  are  aware,  —  a  Damocles' 
sword. 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary  in  the  United  States  has 
already  added  a  fourth  year  to  its  course  of  study;  An- 
dover  is  calling  for  one,  and  probably  within  a  few  years 
will  have  organized  one.  It  is  now  regarded  as  the  proper 
thing  to  do  when  a  man  would  be  fully  equipped,  to  re- 
main a  fourth  year  in  a  theological  college.  There  are  no 
sceptics  trained  as  thoroughly  as  our  best  ministerial  can- 
didates will  be  trained  under  these  new  arrangements. 
I  hold  that  no  one  of  the  learned  professions  has  as  much 
training  in  philosophy  as  the  ministerial  profession  now 
has  in  the  best  theological  schools.  If  you  add  a  fourth 
year  for  some,  if  you  put  these  theological  professorships 
on  the  relations  of  Christianity  to  science  into  all  your 
theological  colleges  of  the  first  rank,  you  will  very  soon 
be  sending  out  men  equipped,  not  with  bows  and  arrows, 


METHODS   OF   MEETING   MODERN   UNBELIEF.         xli 

but  with  modern  armor,  equal  to  that  possessed  by  the 
enemy. 

UTILIZE    THE    GREAT    SPECIALISTS. 

What  further  extension  of  ministerial  culture  would  I 
have  1  Here  is  a  theological  school,  with  a  professorship 
in  it  on  the  relations  of  Christianity  to  science.  /  would 
invite  into  it  great  specialiMs  in  science  -from  outside  theologi- 
cal circles.  In  this  renowned  centre  of  the  world,  two 
great  physicists  who  are  theists,  Dr.  Carpenter  and  Pro- 
fessor Lionel  Beale,  have  as  much  authority  on  tiie  other 
side  the  sea  as  Huxley  or  Tyndall.  I  assure  you,  much 
as  we  revere  the  physiological  knowledge  of  the  last  two 
of  these  men,  we  revere  yet  more  the  physiological  knowl- 
edge of  the  first  two.  Dr.  Cai'penter  only  the  other  even- 
ing said  in  public,  "  There  are  four  things  no  machine  can 
utter,  — '  I  am,  I  ought,  I  can,  I  will ; '  but  man  utters 
them,  and  therefore  he  is  more  than  an  automaton." 
Professor  Lionel  Beale  has  published  the  opinion  that  no 
science  now  in  existence  can  bridge  by  merely  mechanical 
causes  the  chasm  between  lifeless  and  living  matter. 
When,  not  long  ago,  Professor  Huxley  was  asked  in  pri- 
vate by  one  of  his  friends  to  whom  he  had  declared  his 
disbelief  in  spontaneous  generation,  whether  he  had  not 
the  right  to  say  that  into  that  chasm  between  lifeless  and 
living  matter  God  comes  to  create  the  forms  of  organisms, 
Huxley  himself  was  candid  enough  to  reply,  "  You  have 
a  right  to  say  it,  and  I  do  not  know  that  I  can  disprove 
it."  If  Dr.  Carpenter,  if  Lionel  Beale,  were  to  come  to 
the  professorships  lately  organized  in  the  United  States 
for  discussing  the  relations  between  Christianity  and  sci- 
ence, tliey  would  have  the  heartiest  of  welcomes. 

It  will,  of  course,  take  time  to  train  men  to  discuss 


Xlii  CHRIST  AND   MODERN  THOUGHT. 

theology  on  one  side  and  physical  science  on  the  other  in 
their  double  relations ;  but  little  by  little  we  shall  create 
a  new  set  of  professors,  and  little  by  little  we  shall  equip 
young  rnen  with  such  clear  ideas  and  spiritual  purposes, 
that  they  will  become  deadly  in  the  onslaught  npon  ra- 
tionalism based  upon  the  scientific  arguments  of  our  time. 
There  is  no  way  to  meet  rationalism  of  the  scientific  spe- 
cies except  by  rendered  reasons. 

CHRISTIAN    EVIDENCE    SOCIETIES. 

I  would  have  societies  organized  for  promoting  the 
study  of  the  Christian  evidences.  You  have  in  London 
the  Victoria  Institute  and  the  Christian  Evidence  Society  ; 
and  I  notice  with  great  interest  that  the  latter  is  recom- 
mending the  formation  in  our  churches  of  classes  in  the 
Christian  evidences.  The  issuing  of  text-books  on  the 
Christian  evidences  is  to  be  undertaken  by  this  society, 
and  the  writing  of  such  books  is  a  task  worthy  of  the 
best  genius  in  the  Church.  We  have  not  outgrown  Paley 
or  Butler,  but  we  need  to  readjust  their  arguments;  and 
if  any  man  wishes  to  benefit  the  future,  let  him  prepare 
text-books  on  the  Christian  evidences  that  will  be  read, 
and  that  when  read  cannot  be  answered  by  the  ordinary 
carping  of  even  our  brilliant  periodical  literature,  —  some 
of  it  given  to  agnosticism,  some  of  it  dipping  into  the 
edges  of  atheism. 

Of  course  the  utmost  caution  is  needed  to  spiritualize 
all  these  intellectual  efforts,  and  prevent  classes  in  the 
Christian  evidences  from  becoming  places  for  mere  debate. 
Whenever  the  Church  has  tried  to  move  by  her  intellectual 
wing  or  by  her  spiritual  wing  alone,  her  flight  has  been  a 
sorry  spiral.  I  would  have  prayers  joined  to  the  lectures. 
I  would  have  every  youth  taught  to  study  on  his  knees,  — 


METHODS   OF   MEETING   MODERN   UNBELIEF.        xliii 

whether  he  studies  four  years,  or  three,  or  only  an  hour. 
I  would   have   him  taught  everywhere'  that  the  earnest 
Christian  on  his  knees  sees  further  than  the  haughtiest    < 
atheistic  philosopher  on  tiptoe. 


VI. 


THE    POWER   OF   CHRISTIAN    WORK. 

In  this  crowded  assembly,  and  standing  as  I  am  told  I 
do,  here  and  now,  in  the  presence  of  some  of  the  most 
aggressive  Christians  in  England,  and  of  many  of  the 
men  who  know  best  what  it  is  to  carry  Christianity  into 
the  slums  of  a  great  municipality,  let  me  thank  God  for 
the  philanthropic  aggressiveness  of  the  Christian  laity  as  the 
best  of  all  answers  to  secularism.  Do  not  let  secularists 
outwork  you  in  their  approaches  to  the  poor.  Lazarus, 
in  our  time,  lies  in  the  slums  of  great  cities,  and  there 
will  be  the  spot  where,  for  many  ages  to  come,  he  will  be 
found  stripped  and  naked  and  half-dead.  It  was  the 
glorious  example  of  the  Prince  Consort,  assisted  by  the 
patriotic  efforts  and  the  genial  Christian  persistence  of 
scores  of  unknown  men  and  women,  that  opened  here  in 
Great  Britain  the  fashion  of  studying  models  for  lodging- 
houses,  attending  to  the  unsavory  topics  of  hygiene  as  to 
drains,  and  looking  into  all  the  wants  of  the  working- 
man's  cottage.  Your  Tennyson  praises  the  Prince  Con- 
sort for  that  life  of  his  in  which  he  hovered  over  the 
cottages  of  the  poor,  and  did  what  he  could  for  the  per- 
ishing and  dangerous  in  your  great  municipal  populations. 
God  knows  that  I  have  reverence  enough  for  philanthropy 
even  when  I  find  it  conjoined  with  secularism.  When 
infidelity  goes  down  into  the  slums  and  endeavors  to  lift 


xliv    .  CHRIST   AND   MODERN    THOUGHT. 

the  degraded,  I  would  not  rail  too  much  at  its  efforts. 
But  I  would  counteract  the  jDoison  it  distributes  under 
this  sugar  coat  of  philanthropy.  I  would  outwork  it 
in  the  philanthropic  way.  I  would  not  let  it  hold  the 
ears  of  the  uneducated  masses  on  Sundays  without  some- 
times myself  going  out  to  address  audiences  in  the  open 
air.  I  would  not  let  the  .secularist  address  vast  popula- 
tions from  week  to  week  in  his  newspapers,  without  myself 
shedding  printer's  ink  mercilessly  for  the  benefit  of  those 
who  will  not  attend  church.  The  spoken  word  and  the 
printed  word  outside  the  church  must  be  brought  into 
the  service  of  the  gospel  if  we  are  to  counteract  the 
secularist  propagandism  of  our  day.  History  never  saw 
infidelity  organized  for  popular  effect  as  it  is  at  the  present 
moment.  I  believe  that  there  is  no  more  infidelity  now 
on  the  globe  than  in  past  ages,  but  it  can  speak  out  now 
as  it  could  not  in  the  days  of  the  Star  Chamber.  It  has 
the  ear  of  the  masses  through  the  great  and  wise  and 
costl}^  liberty  of  unlicensed  printing.  But  this  liberty 
was  largely  bought  with  Christian  blood.  On  this  spot  I 
cannot  but  pause,  as  an  American,  to  thank  God  for  the 
work  of  some  martyrs  of  the  Fleet  Prison  incarcerated 
here  ^  for  what  they  did  for  the  liberty  of  the  press. 
That  was  work  for  America,  that  was  work  for  Germany, 
that  was  work  for  all  the  lands  of  all  the  zones  as  well  as 
for  the  British  Isles.  Let  us  be  grateful  to  Almighty 
Providence  that  we  are  reaping  in  joy  what  other  men 
have  sown  in  tears,  but  let  us  reap  as  Christians.  Let 
us  take  the  vast  liberty  of  the  press,  and  overcome  the 

'  The  Memorial  Hall,  erected  to  commemorate  the  fidelity  to  con- 
science of  the  Two  Thousand  Clergymen  expelled  from  the  Church  of 
England  in  1662,  stands  on  the  site  of  tlie  old  Fleet  Prison,  in  which  so 
many  of  the  Protestant  and  Puritan  martyrs  were  imprisoned  and  muti- 
lated. 


METHODS    OF   MEETING   MODERN   UNBELIEF.         xlv 

mischief  of  its  license  by  the  omnipresent  use  of  it  in 
defence  of  healthful  opinions. 


VII. 


CHRISTIAN    CONTACT    WITH    THE    UNCONVERTED. 

What  else  would  I  have  church-members  dol  I  am 
coming  to  the  very  'heart  of  this  theme,  and  you  have 
thought  perhaps  that  I  have  omitted  heart  entirely,  and 
have  been  speaking  of  the  head  almost  too  exclusively. 
It  is,  I  believe,  quite  popular  in  London,  it  ought  to  be 
in  Boston,  and  is  becoming  so  there,  to  close  devotional 
meetings  of  churches  tvith  conversations  on  personal  religion 
hetween  Christians  present  and  any  unconverted  ones  who 
are  willing  to  remain.  There  is  nothing  to  awaken  a  dead 
man  like  setting  him  at  work  to  awaken  a  dead  man. 
Put  a  cold  church-member  at  the  work  of  awakening  an 
unconverted  man,  and  you  quicken  the  Church-member 
immensely.  There  is  no  scheme  for  quickening  the  blood 
of  the  Church  like  exercising  the  limbs  of  the  Church. 
For  keeping  the  Church  from  going  into  flaccidity  and 
torpidity  and  diseases  of  stagnation  in  the  circulation, 
there  is  no  preventive  but  exercise  and  strenuous  work. 
The  Church  is  fed  to  repletion,  and  it  is  exercised  so 
little  that  it  has  all  the  diseases  of  an  indolent  aristoc- 
racy. 

When  you  give  out  an  invitation  at  the  close  of  a 
devotional  meeting  to  any  unconverted  persons  who  are 
present  to  remain,  and  some  such  persons  do  stay,  there 
is  no  discourtesy  in  approaching  such  persons  with  the 
topic  of  personal  religion.  A  manly  Christian  aggressive- 
ness will  not  be   unobservant  of  courtesy.     Let  us  close 


xlvi  CHRIST  AND   MODERN  THOUGHT. 

our  church  devotional  meetings  with  gatherings  in  which 
all  who  remain  of  the  unconverted  class  are  told  that  they 
are  to  be  conversed  with  personally  on  religious  themes. 
Here  is  a  man  whose  bargains  for  the  last  week  have  run 
perhaps  as  near  to  lies  as  the  eyelids  to  the  eyeball ;  and 
he  must  converse  with  a  man  he  has  tried  to  cheat :  will 
not  shudders  run  up  and  down  his  frame?  But  his 
Christian  duty  masters  his  will  at  last.  What  ought  to 
be  one  of  the  first  questions  in  such  conversation.'?  I  like 
to  begin  with  this  inquiry,  "What  is  your  chief  religious 
difficulty]"  You  do  not  go  into  such  conversations 
without  secret  prayer ;  you  do  not  go  into  them  without 
a  great  deal  of  study  of  the  Scripture ;  you  have  the 
**  leaves  for  the  healing  of  the  nations,"  the  Biblical 
passages,  at  your  finger-tips  and  on  your  lips.  The 
person  with  whom  you  converse  may  not  know  what  his 
chief  difficulty  is,  but  the  question  fairly  stated  is  well  on 
its  way  towards  solution.  You  induce  him  to  raise  the 
inquiry  what  his  difficulty  is ;  and  you  endeavor  to  untie 
the  knot.  Then  you  ask  that  man  or  woman  to  kneel 
down  with  you  in  God's  house,  and  you  implore  the  Holy 
Spirit  to  untie  the  knot ;  and  in  order  that  your  prayer 
may  not  be  blasphemy,  you  begin  it  by  an  affectionate, 
irreversible,  total  surrender  of  your  own  soul  to  God, 
and  of  the  inquiring  soul  to  the  best  it  knows.  The  con- 
tagion of  your  surrendered  will  is  possibly  caught  by  the 
will  of  this  inquirer.  He,  too,  surrenders,  and  in  seven 
cases  out  of  ten  it  will  be  found  that  true  surrender  of 
the  will  unties  all  knots  of  the  sceptical  mind. 

Effort  like  this  is,  I  believe,  the  thing  we  most  need  for 
the  healing  our  sceptical  populations.  If  preaching  in 
the  pulpit  is  built  on  rendered  reasons,  if  by  all  the 
glorious  aggressiveness  of  Christian  intellectual  effort  we 


METHODS   OF   MEETING  MODERN   UNBELIEF.      xlvii 

can  draw  the  masses  to  their  knees,  they  will  be  taught 
more  on  their  knees  than  they  can  learn  on  the  loftiest 
heights  of  rationalism.  Until  we  have  a  lay  membership 
in  our  churches  ready  to  enter  into  this  work,  and  fit  to 
be  trusted  with  it,  the  Church  will  remain  scandalously 
unequipped  for  its  duties  in  modern  times.  Possibly  pas- 
tors on  my  right  and  on  my  left  are  saying  that  many 
church-members  cannot  be  trusted  to  do  this  work.  A 
pastor,  however,  who  does  his  duty  will  be  present  at  such 
devotional  meetings ;  he  will  instruct  his  church-members 
in  a  general  way  what  to  say ;  he  will  watch  the  effect  of 
the  conversations,*  and  will  supplement  it  by  his  own 
efforts.  Little  by  little  he  will  bring  his  church  to  skill 
in  this  style  of  conversation,  and  so  he  will  make  a  living 
out  of  a  dead  church  ;  so  he  will  make  a  glorious  aggres- 
sive Christian  manhood  out  of  a  torpid,  evasive,  placid 
laity  that  had  no  right  to  be  called  God's  servants,  be- 
cause they  were  not  doing  his  work. 


VIII. 

VISITATION   OP   THE   NON-CHURCH-GOING   MASSES. 

Let  us  have  in  our  churches  not  only  these  conversa- 
tional meetings,  but  little  by  little  what  they  lead  to,  a 
visitation  of  all  the  degraded  quarters  in  our  cities.  Un- 
doubtedly with  the  spirit  of  the  Prince  Consort  there 
floats  above  us  the  soul  of  Thomas  Chalmers.  Let  us 
recollect  what  he  did  for  the  poor  in  Edinburgh ;  and 
pardon  me  if  I,  as  an  American,  take  a  moment  in  which 
to  recall  to  your  attention  facts  well  known  here,  well 
known  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  but  worth  more 
to  Americans  than  to  Englishmen  or  Scotchmen.     You 


^=^ 


\ 


xlviii  CHRIST   AND    MODERN   THOUGHT. 

remember  that  Chalmers  selected  a  desolate  quarter 
called  the  West  Port,  in  Edinburgh,  divided  it  into  sub- 
districts,  and  sent  men  and  women  visitors  into  every 
/  family.  He  organized  Sunday  schools  and  day  schools, 
savings-banks  and  wash-houses,  and  in  other  ways  made 
himself  the  friend  of  the  perishing  and  degraded.  I  have 
myself  been  in  the  room  where  Burke  and  Hare  com- 
mitted their  murders,  and  it  was  in  a  tan-loft  near  that 
room  that  Chalmers  began  his  work.  Its  result  was  that  in 
a  very  few  months  he  had  a  respectable  congregation,  and 
in  less  than  two  years  it  became  a  self-supporting  church. 
Before   Chalmers  died  it  could  have   been  said  he  had 

'  washed  the  quarter  not  white,  indeed,  but  gray;  and  it 
had  been  sooty  black. 

Now,  that  district  visitation,  that  organization  of  a 
church  on  the  territorial  principle,  so  that  it  shall  be 
responsible  for  every  man,  woman,  or  child  within  its 
district,  we,  in  America,  think  is,  after  all,N^e  only  real 

^solution  of  our  difficultie^in  managing  great  cities.  Amer- 
ica has  no  baptized  population,  for  we  have  no  State 
Church,  and  we  do  not  think  it,  as  our  Puritan  fathers 
thought  it,  important  to  bring  the  whole  population  into 
merely  formal  connection  w'lth  the  church  unless  we 
speedily  transform  that  loose  connection  into  a  close  and 
vital  one.  We  want  district  visitation ;  we  want  Chris- 
tian men  and  w^omen  to  go  about  from  house  to  house 
after  our  Lord's  fashion;  we  want  our  great  cities  supplied 
with  the  opportunities  of  Christian  edification  as  thor- 
oughly as  any  rural  populations  have  been  supplied  with 
them.  It  was  Chalmers's  theory  that  if  a  great  city 
were  as  abundantly  supplied  with  churches  as  any  rural 
district,  it  would  be  found  no  harder  to  manage,  because 
human   nature   in  a  great   city  is  nmch  what   it  is  in  the 


METHODS    OF   MEETING   MODERN    UNBELIEF.      xHx 

country,  in  spite  of  temptations  being  increased  by  the 
massing  of  tlie  population.  But  the  notorious  fact  in 
America  is,  that  our  gi'eat  cities  are  not  as  well  supplied 
with  church-sittings  as  the  country-towns.  It  is  a  sug- 
gestive fact,  ascertained  by  the  laborious  investigation  of 
the  secretary  of  this  Union  (Mr.  Mearns),  that  you  have 
in  greater  London  a  million  less  sittings  than  you  ought 
to  have.  Greater  London  includes  Middlesex  and  some 
parishes  in  Kent  and  Surrey,  and  one  or  two  other  coun- 
ties within  twelve  miles  of  Charing  Cross.  Yoa  have 
here  a  population  of  four  and  a  half  millions.  I  under- 
stand that  one  third  of  your  present  sittings  are  not 
occupied,  and  that  you  have  not  more  than  half  what  you 
ought  to  have,  to  accommodate  fifty-eight  per  cent  of  the 
population,  or  the  proportion  that  might  go  to  church. 

Take  Chalmers's  scheme  of  district  visitation,  take 
the  famous  territorial  plan  of  his,  and  put  behind  it  the 
Establishment,  if  you  please,  put  behind  it  Nonconform- 
ity, put  behind  it  Christianity  of  the  vital  species  any- 
where, and  this  threatening  problem  of  managing  cities 
under  free  suffrages  will  begin  to  look  soluble.  I  hold 
that  there  is  nothing  that  will  make  government  by  large 
popular  suffrage  a  safe  arrangement  in  great  cities, 
except  district  visitation,  and  the  carrying  down  of  the 
gospel  to  the  perishing  and  degraded  populations,  to  the 
last  man,  woman,  and  child,  and  to  every  cradle  and 
death-bed. 


IX. 


SCEPTICISM    IN    GERMANY. 

In  Germany,  which  I  suppose  to-day  is  better  equipped 
in  her  universities  than  any  other  land  on  the  globe,  we 

d 


1         CHRIST  AND  MODEKN  THOUGHT. 

^1  have  seen  the  defeat  of  school  after  school  of  rationalistic 
speculation.  It  has  been  my  fortune  to  examine  the 
religious  history  of  ihe  European  universities  very  care- 
fully, and  I  undccake  to  affirm  that  there  are  to-day  in 
Germany  only  three  universities  that  deserve  to  be  called 
predominantly  rationalistic  in  their  theological  department. 
I  do  not  claim  that  Germany  has  not  m  it  rationalism 
enough  in  its  philosophical,  legal,  and  medical  faculties  ; 
but  fifty  or  eighty  years  ago  Germany  sent  us  rational- 
istic works  out  of  her  theological  faculties,  while  to-day 

^_^__  she  is  sending  us  the  best  commentaries  on  the  globe  of 
'  the  evangelical  kind.  It  is  from  Belgium,  it  is  from 
Holland,  it  is  from  parts  of  Switzerland,  it  is  from  Pro- 
fessor Kuenen  and  one  or  two  of  his  type  of  thought,  that 
we  get  a  style  of  comment  reminding  us  of  what  was 
popular  in  the  theological  universities  of  Germany  fifty 
or  eighty  years  ago. 

Histories  of  the  rise,  progress,  and  decline  of  German 
rationalism  have  been  appearing  during  the  last  fifteen 
years ;  and  nobody  doubts  that  rationalism,  especially  as 
connected  with  the  mythical  theory,  has  seen  its  best  day 
in   Germany.     Strauss's   theory  concerning  the  origin  of 

JQ  >  the  Gospels  perished  before  his  own  death.  I  may  say 
' '  that  it  was  buried  before  he  was.  Some  of  the  British 
artisans,  some  of  the  skilled  workingmen  in  America,  are 
fed  to-day  by  infidel  lecturers  on  the  crumbs  swept  out  of 
German  theological  workshops,  and  they  think  the  food 
good  because  it  comes  from  a  learned  land. 

In  the  German  universities  the  incontrovertible  fact  is 
that  the  rationalistic  lecture-rooms  are  now  empty,  and 
the  evangelical  crowded  ;  while  fifty  or  eighty  years  ago 
the  rationalistic  were  crowded,  and  the  evangelical  empty. 
Lord  Bacon  says  that  the  best  materials  for  prophecy  are 


METHODS   OF  MEETING   MODERN   UNBELIEF.  li 

the  uuforced  tendencies  of  educated  young  men.  Take 
up  any  German  year-book,  look  at  the  statistics  of  the 
universities,  ascertain  which  way  the  drift  of  educated 
youth  is  now  setting  in  the  most  learned  circles  in  the  ^v 
world,  and  you  have  before  you  no  unimportant  sign  of 
the  times.  But,  in  looking  for  this,  you  come  upon 
another  sign  no  less  important,  namely,  that  the  leading 
universities  of  Germany  are  now,  and  eighty  years  ago 
were  not,  under  predominant  evangelical  influence.  Ber- 
lin, beyond  doubt  the  university  of  first  importance,  and 
hallowed  by  the  great  names  of  Schleiermacher,  Nean- 
der,  Trendelenburg,  and  Twesten,  is  theologically  led  by 
Domer,  Semisch,  and  Steinmeyer,  —  stanch  defenders  of 
evangelical  faith.  Leipzig,-  with  Kahnis  and  Luthardt 
and  Delitzsch  —  and  lately  with  Tischendorf — among 
her  professors,  contests  with  Berlin  for  the  first  place, 
and  in  the  opinion  of  many  deserves  that  rank,  and  is 
the  renowned  traditional  seat  of  an  orthodoxy  which  at 
some  points  New  England  and  Scotland  —  agreeing  in 
the  main  with  the  present  attitude  of  Berlin  —  might 
consider  excessive.  Halle,  whose  theology  permeates 
Germany,  both  from  the  university  and  from  Francke's 
famous  Waisenhaus,  had  in  it  lately  Tholuck  and  Julius 
Miiller,  known  throughout  the  world  as  antagonists,  and 
as  successful  antagonists,  of  the  subtlest  forms  of  scep- 
ticism. It  was  not  imcommon  to  hear  Julius  Miiller 
spoken  of  as  the  ablest  theologian  of  Germany,  and  his 
successors  at  Halle  inherit  his  spirit.  Tiibingen  itself, 
where  Strauss  put  forth  one  of  his  earliest  works,  and 
Baur  founded  a  theological  party,  has  had  in  it  for  years 
no  Tubingen  school,  but  through  the  professorships  of 
Beck,  Palmerer,  and  Landerer  is  permeated  by  vigorous 
evangelical  influences.     Heidelberg,  under  the  theological 


lii  CHRIST  AND   MODERN   THOUGHT. 

leadership  of  Schenkel,  Hitzig,  Gass,  and  Holtzmann,  is 
to-day  the  only  prominent  university  of  Germany  given 
to  views  that  can  be  called  rationalistic. 

Now,  which  of  these  institutions  is  most  patronized  by 
German  theological  students^  Halle  and  Berlin  may  be 
compared,  in  a  general  way,  as  to  their  theology,  with 
Andover  and  New  Haven  ;  Leipzig,  with  Princeton ;  and 
Heidelberg,  with  the  Unitarian  portion  of  Cambridge.  I 
found  Dorner's,  Muller's,  and  Tholuck's  lecture-rooms 
crowded,  and  Schenkel's  empty.  There  are  in  1880  but 
twenty-four  German  theological  students  at  Heidelberg; 
and  I  have  heard  Schenkel  often,  and  never  saw  more 
than  nine,  eight,  or  seven  students  in  his  lecture-room. 
Counting  both  the  native  and  the  foreign  theological 
students  in  these  institutions,  the  whole  number  at 
rationalistic  Heidelberg  is  24  ;  at  evangelical  Halle,  304  ; 
at  evangelical  Berlin,  230 ;  at  hyper-evangelical  Leipzig, 
'      437  {Universitdtshalender,  1880-81). 

It  must  be  remembered  that  German  students  often 
change  universities,  passing  one  period  in  one  and  another 
in  another,  according  to  the  attractions  of  different  profes- 
sors. It  is  immaterial  to  the  German  student  where  he 
hears  lectures,  provided  he  is  prepared  to  pass  w^ith  credit 
the  severe  final  examinations.  When  a  professor  is  called 
from  one  university  to  another,  a  large  number  of  his 
hearers  often  follow  him.  Thus  it  is  a  fair  test  of  the 
direction  of  the  drift  of  educated  youth  in  Germany,  to 
point  to  the  fact  that  they  give  their  patronage  to  evan- 
gelical, rather  than  to  rationalistic  professors,  and  this 
in  the  overwhelming  proportion  of  ten  to  one. 

"By  far,  by  far,"  was  Professor  Tholuck's  constant 
answer,  when  asked  by  foreign  students  if  orthodoxy  is 
not  stronger  in  Prussia  than  fifty  or  eighty  years  ago. 


f^ 


METHODS   OF   MEETING    MODERN    UNBELIEF.         liii 

111  1826,  at  Halle,  all  the  students  except  five,  who 
were  the  only  ones  that  believed  in  the  Deity  of  our  /\ 
Lord,  and  all  the  professors  of  the  university,  united  in  a 
petition  to  the  Government  against  Tholuck's  appoint- 
ment to  a  professorship  there,  and  the  opposition  rested 
solely  on  the  ground  of  his  evangelical  belief  The 
students  at  Tiibingen,  not  far  from  the  same  date,  cere-  X 
moniously  burned  the  Bible.  "  When  I  came  to  Halle," 
said  Professor  Tholuck  to  me  once,  as  he  walked  up  and 
down  that  famous,  long,  vine-clad  arbor  in  his  garden, 
where  his  personal  interviews  with  German  and  foreign 
students  have  exerted  an  influence  felt  in  two  hemi- 
spheres, "  I  C0UI4  go  twenty  miles  across  the  country  and 
not  once  find  what,  to  use  an  English  word,  is  called  an 
*  experimental '  Christian.  I  was  very  unpopular.  I  was 
subjected  to  annoyance,  even  in  my  lecture-room,  on 
account  of  my  evangelical  belief"  "  His  adversaries  are 
bold  and  cunning.  A  baptism  of  fire  awaits  him  at  / 
Halle,"  wrote  Frederick  Perthes  of  the  young  professor, 
in  1826. 

Contrast  these  murky  threats  of  Tholuck's  morning 
with  the  clear  sky  of  his  westering  sun.  In  December, 
1870,  he  had  completed  so  much  of  a  half-century  of 
work  at  the  University  of  Halle  that  three  days  were 
given  by  his  friends  to  the  celebration  of  the  event. 
There  were  social  gatherings,  and  suppers,  and  speeches 
at  the  hotels.  All  the  halls  and  staircases  of  Tholuck's  "^ 
residence  were  crowded  with  guests.  The  Emperor  Wil- 
liam sent  to  him  the  star  of  the.  Eed  Eagle.  Court- 
preacher  Hoffman  brought  to  him  the  salutations  of  the 
ecclesiastical  council,  as  to  a  veritable  church-father  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  The  various  universities  of 
Germany   were   represented   by   their   ablest    professors. 


liv  CHRIST   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT. 

Pastors  of  different  cities  sent  delegations.  A  letter  to 
Tholuck  was  received,  signed  by  theologians  at  that  hour 
in  the  army  before  Paris.  An  immense  torchlight  pro- 
cession of  students  filled  a  night  with  Luther's  hymn  : 

"  Ein  feste  Burg  ist  unser  Gott." 

"  No  one  can  deny,"  Professor  Tholuck  would  say  to 
me  repeatedly,  "  that  since  the  death  of  Frederick  the 
Great,  or  the  French  Revolution,  or  the  opening  of  the 
V^  century,  or  even  since  fifty  or  forty  years  ago,  there  has 
been  a  great  reaction  in  Germany  against  infidelity  and 
rationalism." 

X. 

THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  FUTURE. 

Why  do  I  outline  thus  the  large  results  of  Christian 
conflict  with  unbelief?  Because  I  believe  in  the  law  of 
the  survival  of  the  fittest.  In  the  presence  of  men  who 
V'  are  perpetually  telling  us  that  this  law  governs  all  human 
history,  I  take  leave  to  remind  you  that  in  the  beginning 
of  this  century  only  £250,000  were  expended  in  all  Chris- 
tendom for  missions;  now  there  are  expended  about 
£1,250,000.  At  the  opening  of  this  century  there  were 
50  translations  of  the  Scriptures,  now  there  are  226. 
There  are  now  printed  and  distributed  so  many  Bibles 
that  there  is  one  in  circulation  for  every  ten  persons  on 
the  face  of  the  earth.  There  are  a  million  church-mem- 
bers now  scattered  through  the  dark  lands  of  the  world, 
and  gathered  out  of  heathendom  itself.  I  was  told  by  a 
secretary  of  the  American  Board  of  Commissioners  for 
Foreign  Missions  that  it  is  within  the  power  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church  in  all  its  branches  to  bring  either  the  printed 


METHODS.  OF  MEETING   MODERN   UNBELIEF.  Iv 

or  the  spoken  gospel  to  the  notice  of  every  living  being 
before  the  close  of  this  century.  We  shall  pass  out  of  </ 
the  world,  but  God  will  remain  in  it,  and  the  plan  on 
wliich  he  has  been  acting  undoubtedly  will  be  that  on 
which  he  will  continue  to  act.  Unto  us  a  Son  was  to  be 
born,  and  he  has  been  born.  Unto  us  there  was  to  be  , 
given  One  who  was  to  be  called  Wonderful,  Counsellor,  "V. 
the  Mighty  God,  the  Everlasting  Father,  the  Prince  of 
Peace,  and  unto  us  One  has  been  given  to  whom  those 
epithets  apply.  Of  the  increase  of  his  government  there 
was  to  be  no  end.  It  appears  in  the  progress  of  missions, 
and  in  the  way  in  which  commerce  has  been  made  of 
God  a  propagandist  of  the  faith,  that  there  is  to  be  an 
opening  into  every  nation,  and  an  emigration  either  of 
Christian  ideas  and  institutions,  or  of  infidel  poisonous 
opinions,  into  those  new  lands  within  the  next  century. 
London  ought  to  make  herself  the  great  colonizer  of  the 
globe  in  the  new  aspect  of  colonization,  as  she  was  in  the 
old.  But  what  if  London  and  Edinburgh  fail  ]  what  if 
Boston  and  I^ew  York  fail  1  what  if  Paris  and  Berlin  fail  ] 
God  will  not  fail.     What  he  does  is  successfully  done. 

Whoever  ascertains  the  trend  of  the  historic  constella- 
tions through  long  periods  obtains  a  glimpse  of  the  hem 
of  the  garment  of  Almighty  God.  What  Providence 
does,  it  from  the  first  intends.  A  sifting  of  Christianity 
has  taken  place  in  this  last  age  by  a  prolonged  contest  of 
unbelief  with  faith,  each  armed  with  the  best  Damascus 
blades  the  world  furnishes  either  to-day ;  and  the  result  ^ 
has  been  a  defeat  of  doubt  on  all  central  points.  It  is, 
therefore,  now  certain  that  it  was  divinely  intended  that 
there  should  be  a  sifting  of  Christianity  in  this  last  age, 
and  that  a  defeat  of  doubt  should  be  the  result.  Pro- 
longed  historic   tendencies   are   allowing   portions  of  his 


Ivi  CHRIST  AND   MODERN  THOUGHT. 

plan  for  the  government  of  the  world  to  become  humanly 
comprehensible. 

When  the  completion  of  a  cycle  of  events  reveals  what 
the  plan  of  the  cycle  was  from  the  first,  it  behooves  men, 
co-ordinating  latest  with  earliest  cycles,  to  ascertain  the 
trend  of  the  movements  in  the  sky ;  and  to  gaze  more 
solemnly  than  upon  the  stars  themselves,  upon  that  Form 
loftier  than  the  stars,  which  passes  by  in  the  darkness 
behind  them,  its  outlines  not  wholly  visible,  but  the 
direction  not  unknown  in  which  it  is  moving  the  constel- 
lations. 

I  commend  the  German,  the  English,  and  the  American 
theological  battle-field  to  the  timid  and  the  hopeful,  who 
go  out  to  walk  and  meditate  in  the  world's  eventide. 
Goethe  could  say  that  the  only  real  and  the  deepest 
theme  of  the  world's  and  of  man's  history,  to  which  all 
y/  other  subjects  are  subordinate,  is  the  conflict  between 
""  faith  and  unbelief.  We  are  the  ancients,  as  Bacon  said  ; 
but  the  inscription,  written  by  history,  which  is  God's 
finger,  and  no  accident,  before  the  sad  eyes  of  the  bruised 
and  staggering  ages,  on  the  trophy  erected  after  the 
severest  intellectual  battle  of  this  oldest  and  liewest  of 
the  centuries,  is :  Via  Crucis,  Via  Lucis  ! —  "  The  way  of 
the  Cross  is  the  way  of  Light." 

I  do  not  respect  any  proposition  merely  because  it  is 
ancient,  or  in  the  mouths  of  majorities ;  but  I  do  respect 
propositions  that  have  seen  honest  and  protracted  battle, 
but  not  defeat.  The  test  of  the  soundness  of  scholarship 
is  that  it  should  contend  with  scholarship,  not  once  or 
twice,  but  century  after  century,  and  come  out  crowned. 
But  the  intellectual  supremacy  of  Christianity  in  the 
nineteenth  century  is  not  a  novelty.  There  are  other 
battle-fields  worth  visiting  by  those  who  walk  and  medi- 


METHODS   OF   MEETING   MODERN   UNBELIEF.        Ivii 

tate,  on  which  Christiau  trophies  stand,  more  important, 
as  marks  of  the  world's  agonies  and  advances,  than  any 
that  ever  Greek  erected  for  victory  at  Salamis  or  Mara- 
thofi.  I  respect  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
I  lean  on  church  history.  I  go  to  its  battle-fields,  and 
lie  down  on  them.  They  are  places  of  spiritual  rest. 
Gazing  on  their  horizon,  1  see  no  narrow  prospect,  but  a 
breadth  of  nineteen  hundred  victorious  years.  Looking 
into  the  sky,  as  I  lie  there,  I  hear  sometimes  the  anthem : 
"  As  it  was  in  the  beginning,  is  now,  and  ever  shall  be, 
world  without  end."  I  obtain  glimpses  of  a  heaven 
opened ;  and  behold,  a  white  horse,  and  he  that  sits  on 
him  is  called  the  Word  of  God,  King  of  kings.  Lord  of 
lords.  He  is  clothed  in  a  vesture  dipped  in  blood ;  but 
his   eyes  are   as  a  flame  of  fire,  and  on  his  head  are 

MANY    CROWNS. 


i-^U4ti    hui^    C^tM^CCi  ^i'  '  ^^^ 


BOSTON  MONDAY  LECTURES. 


I. 

THE    SEEN    AND    THE    UNSEEN. 

Bt  RT.  rev.  THOMAS  M.  CLARK,  D.D.,  LL.D. 


I. 

THE    SEEN   AND    THE    UNSEEN. 

By  RT.  rev.  THOMAS  M.  CLARK,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

'T^HERE  is  not  much  that  is  essentially  new  in 
-■-  the  fundamental  postulates  of  our  modern  phi- 
losophies. The  immutability  of  matter,  the  law  of 
evolution,  the  persistence  of  force,  and  the  principle 
of  natural  selection,  are  all  recognized  in  some  form 
by  ancient  authors ;  but  a  flood  of  light  has  been 
thrown  upon  these  doctrines  by  the  more  recent  dis- 
coveries of  science.  They  have  been  enlivened  by 
rare  and  varied  styles  of  illustration,  drawn  from 
every  department  of  nature,  and  brought  into  much 
closer  contact  with  the  popular  mind  than  they  ever 
were  before.  There  is  great  apprehension  on  one 
side,  and  corresponding  exultation  on  the  other,  ^he 
old-fashioned  believer  fears  that  the  foundations  will 
be  destroyed ;  the  unbeliever  affirms  that  henceforth 
belief  in  the  supernatural  is  impossible\  Both  the 
affirmation  and  the  fear  which  it  excites  are  ex- 
aggerated. At  the  present  moment  there  is  a  decided 
reaction  on  the  part  of  those  who  have  been  regarded 
as  the  enemies  of  spiritual  truth  ;  and,  finding  them- 
selves  suspended   in  mid-air   between   heaven   and 


4         CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

earth,  with  no  sufficient  hold  upon  either,  even  the 
substance  of  matter  having  evaporated  in  the  process 
of  eliminating  the  spirit  which  vivified  it,  obliged 
yjto  choose  between  God  and  the  atom,  ^and  finding 
the  difficulties  which  encompass  the  existence  of 
the  former  surpassed  by  those  which  pertain  to  the 
being  and  functions  of  the  latter,  — /inen  of  science 
are  now  beginning  to  revise  their  own  record,  and  I 
believe  that  the  wisest  and  most  profound  amongst 
them  will  soon  be  found  on  the  spiritual  and  super- 
natural side^  Having  already  done  a  good  work  in 
overturning  some  of  the  idols  of  belief,  in  which  we 
had  trusted  too  fondly  and  too  blindly,  they  will  now 
furnish  us  with  a  true  and  rational  basis  of  faith, 
which  will  be  none  the  less  faith  because  it  rests 
upon  intelligent  conviction. 

ARE   MATTER  AND   SPIRIT  IDENTICAL  ? 

The  question  at  issue  to-day,  and  it  involves  all 
that  is  essential  in  tlie  intellectual  warfare  that  is 
't^ now  raging,  is  this,  —  are  matter  and  spirit  identical? 
and,  if  they  are  not,  is  the  spiritual  world  a  product 
of  the  physical,  or  is  the  original  pattern  of  the  ma- 
terial universe  to  be  found  in  the  spiritual  ? 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  says  "  that  there  is  no  precise 
line  of  demarcation  between  physiological  and  psycho- 
logical facts,  and  that  every  absolute  distinction  is  illu- 
sory. Sensations,  sentiments,  instincts,  intelligence, 
U—  all  constitute  a  world  apart ;  but  which  comes  out  of 
the  animal  world,  in  which  it  is  rooted,  of  which  it  is, 
as  it  were,  the  efflorescence.     Between  the  most  hum- 


THE   SEEN   AND   THE   UNSEEN.  5 

ble  practice  aud  the  most  lofty  thought  there  is  no 
opposition  of  nature,  but  there  is  difference  in  degree, 
each  being  only  one  of  the  innumerable  manifesta- 
tions of  life."  If  this  is  not  the  doctrine  of  pure, 
materialistic  monism,  it  is  a  plain  denial  of  "  the  ex- 
istence  of  any  precise  line  of  demarcation  between  ^ 
spirit  and  matter." 

Dr.  Carpenter,  in  his  principles  of  mental  physi- 
ology, quotes  with  approval  from  the  late  Charles 
Baxter  as  follow^s  :  '*'  Irresistible,  undeniable  facts  de- 
monstrate that  man  is  not  a  den,  wherein  two  enemies 
are  chained  together,  but  one  being;  that  soul  and 
body  are  one, —  one  and  indivisible.  We  had  better  ^ 
face  this  great  fact.  'T  is  no  good  to  blink  it.  Our 
knowledge  of  physiology  has  come  to  a  point  where 
the  old  idea  of  man's  constitution  must  be  thrown 
aside.  To  struggle  against  the  overwhelming  force 
of  science,  under  the  notion  of  shielding  religion,  is 
mere  play." 

Dr.  Priestley,  who  "  thought  that  he  had  sufficiently 
proved  that  mind  is  nothing  but  a  modification  of 
matter,"  is  a  little  more  outspoken  than  some  of  our 
modern  materialists ;  and  so  also  is  Mr.  Hume,  who 
says  expressly :  "  Within  myself  I  am  conscious  only 
of  impressions  and  ideas.  (The  substance  called  mind  -f^ 
is  a  mere  fiction,  imagined  for  the  support  of  these, 
as  the  substance  called  matter  is  imagined  for  the 
support  of  sensible  qualities."  /  This  is  the  ultima- 
tum of  denial ;  unless,  indeed,  it  is  surpassed  by  the 
statement  once  made  to  me  by  a  learned  savant,  to 
the  effect  that  he  could  not  honestly  affirm  his  be-    . 


6         CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

J  ^li'p-f  in  anything  "but  the  relation  of  mathematical 
'     quantities." 

THE  MATERIAL  MONADIC  THEORY. 

>  -  Let  US  see  what  is  involved  in  this  material,  mo- 
nadic theory.  In  the  first  place,  matter  must  be  alive, 
and  must  have  been  so  from  eternity ;  just  as  much 
alive  as  it  is  to-day,  for  there  could  be  no  accession  of 
life  at  any  given  period.  This,  according  to  the  theo- 
rem of  immutability  and  continuity,  of  which  the  ma- 
terialists make  so  much,  is  impossible.  There  can  have 
been  no  first  monad,  a  germ  of  life,  for  the  introduc- 
tion of  this  would  also  violate  the  same  theorem ;  and 
so  every  monad  now  in  existence  must  have  always 
existed,  possessing  always  the  same  degree  of  potency. 
These  monads  must  have  not  only  been  eternally  alive, 
but  they  must  also  have  always  possessed  the  element 
of  force,  in  virtue  of  which,  acting  in  concert,  they 
were  able  to  organize  everything  in  the  universe  that 
exists,  or  ever  existed.  Now  force  is  not  a  thing,  any 
more  than  sight  or  sound ;  it  is  a  mere  transference  of 
energy,  and  can  be  exerted  only  on  the  condition  of  a 
change  of  state  or  position.  If  I  wish  to  get  mechan- 
ical force  out  of  air  or  matter  or  any  form  of  matter, 
I  do  it  by  altering  the  position  of  things,  by  making 
a  vacuum  in  the  air,  or  causing  the  water  to  fall  from 
a  height,  or  by  withdrawing  a  portion  of  the  electric 
fluid  from  one  substance,  in  order  to  develop  action 
by  contact  with  another.  But,  whatever  I  do,  I  can 
neither  increase  nor  diminish  the  actual  amount  of 
energy  that  exists  in  the  universe,  any  more  than  I  can 


THE   SEEN  AND  THE  UNSEEN.  7 

increase  or  diminish  the  quantity  of  matter.  So  that 
whatever  degree  or  amount  of  energy  exists  to-day 
must  have  always  existed.  Again,  energy  can  be 
transmuted  into  force  only  by  an  influence  coming 
upon  it  ah  extra.  Nothing  moves  unless  it  is  im- 
pelled. Now  the  monad  is  matter ;  and  force  is  not 
matter,  but  something  analogous  to  the  spiritual. 
The  clearest  conception  that  we  have  of  force  origi- 
nates in  the  action  of  the  will,  which  is  not  force  in 
itself,  but  only  a  condition,  upon  the  exercise  of  which 
energy  is  transmuted  into  force.  /There  must,  then, 
have  always  been  something  more  man  matter  in  the  ^ 
universe.  Energy,  which  is  not  a  thing,  or  an  atom, 
or  a  compound  of  atoms,  must  have  existed  from 
eternity ;  and  then  there  must  also  have  been  some 
sort  of  influence  also  not  atomic,  by  means  of  which 
this  energy  is  transmuted  into  force. 

.THE   THEORIES   OF  BAIN   AND   PALEY. 

The  eternal  living  monad  must  have  had  the  power, 
not  only  to  organize  itself,  but  everything  else  that 
exists,  or  ever  has  existed.  This  supposes  something 
more  than  life  or  force.  Organization  involves  the 
idea  of  a  'plan,  and  therefore  the  monad,  or  atom,  or 
molecule,  must  be  intelligent.  Professor  Bain  says  : 
"  This  tendency  on  the  part  of  matter  to  organize  itself, 
to  grow  into  shape,  to  assume  definite  forms  in  obe- 
dience to  the  definite  action  of  force,  is  all-pervading. 
It  is  in  the  ground  on  which  you  tread,  in  the  water 
you  drink,  in  the  air  you  breathe.  Incipient  life,  as 
it  were,  manifests  itself  throui^hout  the  whole  of  what 


^ 


^ 


8  CHRIS-T   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT. 

we  call  inorganic  nature."  When  we  speak  of  "  the 
tendencies  of  matter,"  we  merely  describe  the  mode 
in  which  it  acts,  or  the  law  under  which  it  acts,  but 
obviously  law  is  not  force.  Paley  puts  the  matter  in 
his  clear  way  as  follows :  "  It  is  a  perversion  of 
language  to  assign  any  law  as  the  efficient  operative 
cause  of  anything.  A  law  presupposes  an  agent ;  for 
it  is  the  only  mode  according  to  which  an  agent  pro- 
ceeds. It  implies  a  power ;  for  it  is  the  order  accord- 
ing to  which  that  power  acts.  Without  this  agent, 
without  this  power,  which  are  both  distinct  from  itself, 
the  laio  does  nothing,  is  nothing."  And  when  Mr. 
Bain  talks  about  "  incipient  life  "  as  "  manifesting 
itself  trhroughout  the  whole  of  what  we  call  inorganic 
nature,"  he  virtually  recognizes  the  presence  of  some- 
thing that  is  not  material.  The  principle  of  life  in 
a  seed,  or  an  egg,  or  in  any  sort  of  embryo,  is  not 
inherent  in  the  materials  of  which  it  is  composed,  or 
the  mere  result  of  juxtaposition,  —  no  art  of  mechanics 
or  chemistry  could  ever  manufacture  a  seed  that 
would  grow. 

Again,  according  to  the  theory  of  the  monists,  the 
atom  must  have  in  it  an  inherent  aesthetic  element, 
and  be  competent  to  organize  in  accordance  with 
the  laws  of  beauty,  both  of  form  and  color.  It  is  an 
architect,  a  sculptor,  a  painter.  The  splendors  of  the 
landscape,  the  glory  of  the  flower,  existed  potentially 
in  the  monad,  interminable  ages  before  this  tiny,  in- 
visible god  saw  fit  to  develop  itself  in  the  present 
forms  of  what  (for  want  of  a  better  word)  we  have 
been  accustomed  to  call  creation.     But  the  greatest 


THE   SEEN   AND   THE  UNSEEN.  9 

marvel  remains  to  be  noticed.  The  monad  must  have 
been  endowed,  not  only  with  aesthetic  intelligence,/^  -^ 
but  also  with  a  conscience  ;  for  in  these  latter  days  it 
has  seen  fit  to  take  upon  itself  the  form  of  a  being 
who  is  competent  to  distinguish  between  right  and 
wrong,  and  still  further  to  become  conscious  of  what 
is  popularly  known  as  the  sentiment  of  reverence. 
All  this  must  be  so,  because  ^ere  can  be  nothing  in 
an  effect  which  did  not  already  exist  in  its  cause,  ^ind 
the  ^effect  can  continue  only  so  long  as  the  cause  "^con- 
tinues to  work  in  it.  When  the  cause  ceases,  of  course 
the  effect  must  also  cease  ;  and  to  say  that  nature  is 
both  cause  and  effect  is  nonsense.  It  is  equally  ab- 
surd to  say  that  nature  and  life  are  identical.  Tn.the 
words  of  Swedenborg :  "  Nature,  in  respect  to  life,  is 
dead.  If  nature  lived  it  would  live  either  from  it- 
self or  from  some  other  being,  or  by  some  other  being. 
If  it  lived  from  itself,  then  that  would  live  which  we 
clearly  see  does  not  live,  and  nature  would  destroy 
itself  whenever  it  destroys  its  forms,  in  which  and 
according  to  which  life  exists.  So,  also,  it  would  not 
only  be  the  principle  of  its  own  causes  and  effects,  but 
also  the  principle  of  its  principle ;  or  else  this  prin- 
ciple would  convert  itself  into  nature,  in  order  that  it 
might  be  enabled  to  be  what  it  is  not ;  which  every 
one  sees  to  be  opposite  to  common  sense." 

But,  we  are  told  that  no  one  ever  heard,  or  saw,  or 
tasted,  or  smelt  a  spiritual  substance,  and  that  the 
term  itself  conveys  no  intelligible  meaning.  No  one 
ever  heard,  or  saw,  or  tasted,  or  smelt  a  molecule,  and 
the  whole  atomic  theory  is  only  a  working  hypothesis. 


10        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

plausible  enough  and  provable  perhaps,  but  still  rest- 
ing upon  no  testimony  of  the  senses. 

RELATIONS   OF   MIND   AND   MATTER. 

Again,  it  is  said  to  be  inconceivable  that  a  particle 
of  matter  should  come  into  being  or  pass  out  of  being, 
while  what  is  called  spirit  is  supposed  to  come  and 
go,  and  the  act  of  consciousness  may  be  temporarily 
suspended.  This  point  has  been  satisfactorily  met 
by  a  very  striking  analogy  in  the  kingdom  of  nature, 
where  "  energy  of  visible  motion  often  disappears  by 
transformation  into  the  dormant  or  latent  energy  of 
position."  The  capacity  of  consciousness  does  not 
cease  when  we  stop  thinking.  It  is  urged  still  fur- 
ther that  every  act  of  thought  is  attended  by  some 
corresponding  change  in  the  tissue  of  the  body,  and 
cannot  be  exercised  except  upon  this  condition ;  so 
that,  even  if  there  were  an  inherent  distinction  be- 
tween mind  and  matter,  the  former  is  dependent 
upon  the  latter,  and  cannot  exist  separate  from  the 
structure  which  excites  its  activity.  It  is  assumed 
that  "a  definite  thought  and  a  definite  molecular 
action  in  the  brain  occur  simultaneously  ; "  but,  as  the 
Eev.  Mr.  Gorman  (to  whose  elaborate  and  very  able 
treatise  on  Christian  Psychology  I  am  much  in- 
debted) has  w^ell  said  :  "  All  simultaneous  action  in  a 
living  organism  necessarily  presupposes  successive 
action.  For  example,  thought  precedes  speech,  and 
will  precedes  act.  When  the  mind  is  excited  from 
without,  molecular  movement  of  the  brain  must  actu- 
ally precede  sensation.     When  the  brain  is  set  in 


THE   SEEN   AND   THE   UNSEEN.  11 

motion  from  within,  mental  activity  must  actually 
precede  cerebral  movement."  That  the  mind  is  capa- 
ble of  acting,  without  being  moved  or  prompted  by 
external  stimulus,  our  consciousness  affirms,  and  this 
is  enough  to  determine  the  question  of  its  indepen- 
dent or  absolute  existence. 

THE  CONNECTION  BETWEEN  THE  BODY  AND  THE  SOUL. 

But,  while  we  deny  that  mind  or  thought  is  a  mere 
function  of  the  body,  we  cannot  help  allowing  the. 
necessity  of  some  intermediate  link  between  the  body 
and  the  soul,  in  order  to  explain  their  mutual  reac- 
tion ;  or  the  existence  of  an  intermediate  substance 
of  almost  inconceivable  tenuity,  constituting  a  link 
or  bond  between  the  gross  corporeal  body  and  the 
spiritual  substance  commonly  called  the  soul.  I 
must  here  be  allowed  to  quote  a  very  striking  passage 
from  a  sermon  preached  by  Dean  Mansell  in  the  pul- 
pit of  the  University  Church  :  "  All  action,  whether 
free  or  constrained,  and  all  passion  implies  and  rests 
upon  another  great  mystery  of  philosophy,  —  the 
commerce  between  mind  and  matter.  The  properties 
and  operations  of  matter  are  known  only  by  the  ex- 
ternal senses ;  the  faculties  and  acts  of  the  mind  are 
known  only  by  the  internal  apprehension.  The  en- 
ergy of  the  one  is  motion,  the  energy  of  the  other 
is  consciousness.  What  is  the  middle  term  which 
unites  these  two,  and  how  can  their  reciprocal  ac- 
tion, unquestionable  as  it  is  in  fact,  be  conceived  as 
possible  in  theory?  How  can  a  contact  between 
body  and  body  produce  consciousness  in  the  imma- 


12        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

terial  soul  ?  How  can  a  mental  self-determination 
produce  the  motion  of  material  organs  ?  How  can 
mind,  which  is  neither  extended  nor  figured,  nor 
colored  in  itself,  represent,  by  its  ideas,  the  extension 
and  figure  and  color  of  bodies  ?  How  can  the  mind 
be  determined  to  a  new  position  in  space  by  an  act 
of  thought,  to  which  space  has  no  relation  ?  How  can 
thought  itself  be  carried  on  by  bodily  instruments 
and  yet  itself  have  nothing  in  common  with  bodily 
affections  ?  What  is  the  relation  between  the  last 
pulsation  of  the  material  brain  and  the  first  awaken- 
ing of  the  mental  perception  ?  How  does  the  spoken 
word,  a  merely  material  vibration  of  the  atmosphere, 
become  echoed,  as  it  were,  in  the  silent  voice  of 
thought,  and  take  its  part  in  an  operation  wholly 
spiritual  ? "  These  are  tough  questions,  and,  in  the 
opinion  of  the  Dean,  they  have  not  yet  been  an- 
swered. The  attempt  has  been  made  by  theories  of 
Pre-established  Harmony,  a  Plastic  Medium,  and  so 
on,  all  of  which  he  regards  as  so  many  confessions  of 
an  unresolved  mystery.  And  yet  one  of  the  ablest 
modern  psychologists  says  that  "  the  battle-ground  of 
a  rational  psychology  lies  here.  Now,  more  than  at 
any  previous  time,  it  behooves  all  who  desire  to  con- 
tribute to  the  real  and  solid  advance  of  psychological 
science,  to  endeavor,  by  adequate  analysis  of  the 
phenomena,  to  penetrate  the  mysterious  middle  region 
occupied  by  what  has  been  called  the  '  animal  spirits.' 
There  is  the  'passage,'  'gulf,'  'film,'  limbics,  or  by 
whatsoever  name  called  —  alleged,  without  an  at- 
tempt at  proof,  to  be  impassable  —  which  divides  the 


THE  SEEN  AND  THE  UNSEEN.         13 

two  distinct  but  closely  correlated  spheres  of  soul  and 
body."  It  would  be  useless,  within  the  limited  space 
allowed  me,  to  attempt  to  give  an  outline  of  the 
theories  propounded  by  Christian  Wolf,  Raymond 
Vieussens,  Unzer,  Prof.  Bain,  Drs.  Maudsley  and 
Beale,  Claude  Bernard,  Dr.  Eichardson,  and  Dr. 
George  Moore,  which  have  relation  to  this  subject.  I 
will,  however,  cite  a  passage  from  the  last-named 
writer,  which  seems  to  me  to  be  very  suggestive : 
"  We  possess  evidence  that  there  exists  an  all-pervad- 
ing something,  not  to  be  defined  as  matter,  but  which 
may  be  regarded  as  the  substantial  medium  of  those 
actions  known  as  light,  heat,  electricity,  gravitation, 
and  magnetism.  That  the  mind  operates  on  this 
medium  in  our  visible  bodies  we  find  in  the  fact  that 
a  man,  by  the  mere  act  of  his  will  in  contracting  the 
muscles,  say  of  his  arm,  causes  a  current  of  influence 
which  sensibly  deflects  the  needle  of  the  galva- 
nometer, the  currents  being  opposite  in  the  opposite 
arms.  Moreover,  it  appears  that  the  nerves  of  sen- 
sation are  positive,  the  nerves  of  motion  negative,  so 
that  every  act  of  impression  and  of  will  seems  to 
operate  through  an  agency  similar  to  that  of  an  elec- 
tric telegraph.  The  will  being  capable  of  moving  this 
agency  and  of  being  moved  through  it,  may  we  not 
reasonably  imagine  it  possible  that  the  soul  is  to  be 
forever  associated  with  it  in  some  specific  and  identi- 
cal form  ?  This  agency  is  probably  one  with  the  all- 
penetrating  medium  of  the  universe,  called,  for  lack 
of  a  name  sufficiently  definite,  ether.  It  is  calculated 
to  serve  as  a  spiritual  body,  which,  taking  direction 


14        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

and  impression  as  the  vehicle  of  the  soul,  might 
be  capable  of  intiuence  and  action  in  sympathy 
with  all  the  changes,  mental  and  physical,  of  the 
nni  verse." 

I  have  room,  in  the  present  connection,  to  cite  only 
one  further  extract,  and  that  is  taken  from  Unzer's 
Principles  of  Physiology,  a  work  of  no  inconsiderable 
authority  :  "  All  the  phenomena  of  motion  and  sen- 
sation, manifested  through  the  nerves,  render  proba- 
ble the  existence  of  a  remarkably  subtle  fluid  essence, 
which  is  present  invisibly  in  the  medulla  of  the  brain 
and  nerves,  and  is  the  means  whereby  all  the  func- 
tions of  both  are  performed.  It  is  termed  the  vital 
spirits  or  nervous  fluid,  but  it  is  not  known  how  and 
when  it  contributes  to  the  animal  actions.  It  is  not 
that  fluid  matter  which  is  seen  in  the  medulla  of  the 
brain  and  nerves,  but  a  much  more  subtle  fluid  im- 
perceptible to  the  senses.  It  is  inferred  from  the 
phenomena  which  betray  its  existence,  that  this  ner- 
vous fluid  is  a  remarkably  mobile  fluid,  a  spirituous 
vapor,  which  can  be  neither  aqueous,  nor  glutinous, 
nor  elastic,  nor  ethereal,  nor  electrical.  The  train  is 
the  laboratory  of  the  vital  spirits.  It  appears  certain 
that  there  is  such  a  fluid  essence  secreted  from  the 
vessels  of  the  gray  matter  of  the  brain  into  the  hollow 
tubes  of  the  medullary  matter,  which  is  carried  by 
the  tubes  of  the  nerves  to  their  termination,  and 
supplies  the  principle  whereby  the  nerves  are  ren- 
dered capable  of  being  the  agents  of  the  senses  and 
of  movements." 


THE  SEEN  AND  THE  UNSEEN.         15 


MAN  A  THREEFOLD  BEING. 

It^  would  appear,  then,  that  man,  in  his  present 
stage  of  existence,  is  a  threefold  being,  consisting  of  a 
material  body,  a  vital  principle,  and  a  mind.  By  the 
first  he  stands  connected  with  all  material  forms ;  by 
the  second,  with  all  vitalized  forms ;  and  by  the  third, 
with  all  beings  of  his  own  particular  species  and  all 
above  him  in  rank.  The  first  is  transient,  always  in 
a  state  of  flux  ;  the  second  gives  form  to  this  transient 
body,  and  directs  all  its  special  functions ;  the  third 
gives  man  the  consciousness  of  being  what  he  is,  and 
enables  him  to  know  and  perceive  what  is  going  on 
around  him.  In  his  present  state  the  three  are  in- 
separable, and  have  mutual  relations. 

The  body,  or  the  atomic  part  of  man,  cannot  create 
vitality ;  the  vital  or  organizing  principle  cannot  be 
a  result  of  the  mere  collocation  of  atoms.  The  vital 
principle  affects  the  spiritual  or  mental,  but  does  not 
absolutely  control  it,  and  certainly  does  not  create  it. 
Tlie  spiritual,  after  all,  is  supreme.  The  power  of 
perception,  the  consciousness  of  thought,  the  will,  and 
the  moral  sense  constitute  the  soul,  and  the  soul  is 
the  man. 

And  now,  coming  back  to  the  main  question,  which 
may  be  thus  stated,  Is  the  original  pattern  of  things 
material,  and  does  what  appears  to  be  spirit  flow  out 
from  that,  as  a  result  and  effect ;  or  is  the  universe, 
man  of  course  included,  the  simple  reduction  of  a 
spiritual  conception  to  form  ?  I  will  illustrate  the 
point  at  issue  by  the  simple  analogy  of  what  is  called 


/ 


> 


16        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

music.  We  become  conscious  of  musical  sounds 
through  the  medium  of  atmospheric  waves  striking 
upon  a  mechanical  instrument  in  the  ear,  the  vibra- 
tions thus  caused  being  then  carried  by  certain  strings 
or  cords  to  the  brain,  where  the  material  process  is 
translated  into  the  perception  which  we  call  sound. 
We  then  go  back  a  little  farther  and  we  find  that 
these  waves  in  the  air  were  produced  by  certain 
mechanical  movements  in  the  throat,  or  through  the 
agency  of  instruments  made  of  parchment  or  wire,  or 
wood  or  brass,  or  some  other  physical  substance,  so 
that,  thus  far,  until  we  come  to  the  last  factor  of  the 
problem,  which  is  the  transmutation  of  these  vibra- 
tions into  the  act  of  perception  or  sound,  everything 
seems  to  lie  on  the  material  plane.  And  now,  going 
back  one  step  farther,  we  find  that  the  special  action 
of  the  throat  or  the  brass  instrument,  which  gave 
character  to  the  musical  sounds,  was  determined  by 
certain  written  or  printed  lines  and  dots  and  figures, 
known  as  the  score ;  and  where  did  this  score  come 
from?  Out  of  the  mind  of  the  composer;  and  in  the 
realms  of  his  spiritual  being  all  these  harmonies  and 
melodies  existed  as  a  fact  before  he  ever  put  pen  to 
paper.  In  his  apprehension  the  music  exists,  and  it 
is  capable  of  being  enjoyed  by  him,  independent  of 
any  material  pulsations ;  although,  indeed,  his  sense 
of  gratification  is  greatly  enhanced  when  he  hears  the 
thought  of  his  mind  reproduced  in  actual  song.  Now 
observe  that  at  both  ends  of  the  process  we  need  to 
have  a  spiritual  being,  in  order  to  the  existence  of 
music,  —  a  mind  to  compose  i.,  and  a  mind  to  perceive 


THE  SEEN  AND  THE  UNSEEN.         17 

it.  The  universe  is  constructed  upon  the- same  prin- 
ciples of  harmony  which  constitute  music.  There  is 
a  singular  analogy  between  the  laws  of  sight  and  the 
laws  of  sound  :  there  are  seven  primary  colors  and 
seven  primary  sounds,  —  thirds,  fifths,  and  octaves 
make  harmony  in  both  ;  there  are  com  pigmentary 
colors  and  complementary  sounds ;  there  are  discords 
of  color  and  discords  of  sound,  occasioned  by  the  same 
general  law,  and  as  the  eye  is  offended  by  one,  so 
is  the  ear  offended  by  the  other.  There  is  a  law  of 
rhythm  which  pervades  the  universe,  and  if  the 
spiritual  ear  were  quickened,  we  might  actually  hear 
the  music  of  the  spheres. 

Is  it  possible  for  a  human  being  to  believe  that  all 
this  can  be,  without  also  believing  that  there  is  a 
divine,  spiritual,  preconceived  plan,  of  which  the 
material  universe  is  only  the  manifestation  ? 

OUR  PERSONAL  IMMORTALITY. 

The  bearing  of  all  this  upon  the  question  of  our 
own  personal  immortality  gives  to  the  subject  a  most 
profound  and  solemn  interest.  It  is  hardly  conceiv- 
able that  man  should  have  been  endowed  with  im- 
mortality, and  yet  so  constituted  as  to  be  unable  to 
arrive  at  any  satisfactory  proof  of  the  fact.  To  those 
who  receive  the  records  of  the  New  Testament  as  au- 
thentic and  true,  no  further  demonstration  is  needed ; 
for  those  records  not  only  declare  the  fact  of  eternal 
life,  but  also  give  a  tangible  assurance  of  the  same  in 
the  reappearance  of  Christ  after  his  death.  In  these 
days  of  sharp  and  ruthless  historical  criticism  it  is, 

2 


18        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

however,  very  desirable,  if  we  can,  to  supplement  and 
confirm  the  doctrine  of  that  Book  by  argument  drawn 
from  other  sources;  and  the  most  implicit  believer 
will  surely  not  object  to  our  drawing  upon  the  re- 
sources of  science  and  philosophy  to  establish  a  truth 
which  science  and  philosophy  have  done  so  much  to 
discredit.  A  work,  entitled  "  The  Unseen  Universe," 
^  by  B.  Stewart  and  P.  G.  Tait,  published  last  year  in 
'  London,  attempts  to  construe^  upon  a  scientific  basis 
the  doctrine  of  man's  continued  existence  after  death. 
The  book  has  been  assailed  on  one  side  by  those  who 
regard  it  as  teaching  only  a  "  dangerously  subtle  ma- 
terialism," and  on  the  other  as  "  orthodoxly  credu- 
lous and  superstitious,"  as  being,  in  fact,  "  the  most 
hardened  and  impenitent  nonsense  that  ever  called 
itself  original  speculation."  The  intervention  of  one 
who  aims  to  reconcile  science  with  religion  seems  to 
/  operate  like  a  red  rag  in  stirring  up  to  hot  strife  both 
the  orthodox  bull,  who  does  not  believe  in  science  at 
all,  and  the  heterodox  bear,  who  does  not  believe  that 
there  is  a  God,  or  that  man  ever  had  any  soul. 

There  is,  perhaps,  no  grosser  form  of  materialism 
than  that  of  the  theological  school  which  teaches  the 
doctrine  of  a  final  reconstruction  of  the  animal  body ; 
a  recomposition  of  the  physical  atoms  disintegrated 
by  the  act  of  death ;  the  man  thus  raised  to  become  a 
resident  in  some  sort  of  physical  lieaven,  —  a  dogma 
which  destroys  the  basis  upon  which  the  only  satis- 
factory philosophical  or  scientific  argument  for  im- 
mortality can  be  constructed,  namely,  the  lavj  of  conti- 
nuity.   This  ig  the  universal  law  of  nature,  and  all  our 


+ 


^0  THE   SEE^ 


AND   THE   UNSEEN.  19 


calculations  rest  upon  it.     Now,  scientifically  speak-  / 

ing,  what  is  the  eftect  of  death  ?  'It  certainly  does  ^'-^  0 ; 
not  wipe  out  of  being  an  atom  of  the  substance  by        V*^ 
which  our  material  organism  was  built  up. ' '  It  sim-  ^ 
ply  precipitates  a  process  which  had  always  been  going 
on  by  gradual  degrees,  —  the  return  of  our  primordial 
substance  to  its  normal  or  original  condition.     Nei- 
ther is  it  conceivable  that  the  energy  which  actuated  /tt% 
the  body  while  it  lived  is  annihilated  at  death ;   for  ' 
energy,  as  we  have  before  seen,  is  just  as  much  a  fixed 
quantity  as  matter.     The  demonstration  of  force,  re- 
sultant from  that  energy,  may  cease  to  be  manifested, 
just  as  all  indications  of  force  cease  when  opposite 
persons  become  equalized.     When  I  discharge  a  Ley- 
den  jar,  I  neither  add  to  nor  diminish  the  amount  of 
electricity.     Once  more,  unless  the  soul  is  a  mere  ) 
function  of  the  body,  and  the  brain  secretes  conscious- 
ness as  the  liver  secretes  bile,  the  principle  of  con- 
tinuity demands  that  it  should  continue  to  be,  after 
the  machine  or  framework  which  it  shaped  and  in- 
spired has  fallen  to  pieces. 

Everj'thing,    then,    depends    upon    the    question 
whether  or  not  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  spiritual  uni-  t^ 
verse,  —  anything,  anywliere,  beside  atomic  matter,  ^ 
or  wliat  the  philosophers  now  call  stuff.     There  are^ 
not  many  wise  men  in  our  day  who  are  ready  to  remit 
everything  to  non-existence  that  is  of  the  nature  of 
spirit,  and,  if  there  was  anything  antecedent  to  the>^  ^    ^ 
visible  universe,  there  may  be  something  which  will 
survive  it. 

One  thing  is  quite  certain ;  this  visible  universe 


20        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

must,  sooner  or  later,  have  an  end,  just  as  truly  as 

V  the  body  of  man  wears  out  and  ceases  to  be.  There 
is  no  immortality  for  that.  All  motion  in  that  uni- 
verse must  cease,  whenever  everything  is  brought  into 
equilibrium,  which  the  constant  dissipation  of  energy 
that  is  going  on  makes  inevitable.  The  energy  thus 
dissipated,  and  the  force  thus  destroyed,  may  be  re- 
stored if  we  suppose  it  to  originate  in  a  spiritual  uni- 
verse, but  not  otherwise. 

Is  it,  however,  possible  for  us  to  apprehend  the 
nature  of  that  spiritual  existence  which  is  involved  in 
our  personal  immortality  ?  The  existence  of  finite 
beings,  unconditioned  by  time  and  space,  is  inconceiv- 
able.    The  old  idea  of  the  soul,  as  passing  off  into 

^  space  like  a  puff  of  empty  nothiugness,^without  form 
or  substance,  without  any  kind  of  organ  or  function, 
still  existing,  but  nowhere  in  particular,  is  about 
equivalent  to  annihilation.  St.  Paul  tells  us  that 
when  his  eartlily  tabernacle,  or  tent,  is  removed,  there 

^  is  another  dwelling-place  awaiting  him,  —  a  new  vest- 
ure, after  the  old  one  is  worn  out.  Thomas  Aquinas  ar- 
gues "  to  the  effect  that  it  is  not  repugnant  to  the 
nature  of  a  spiritual  substance  to  be  the  form  of  the 
body ;  since  this  only  means  that,  in  relation  to 
the  body,  it  is  the  principle  of  these  perfections  through 
the  instrumentality  of  which  the  body  has  some  resem- 
blance to  the  spirit,  and  is  a  being  at  once  actual,  sub- 
sistent,  corporeal,  living,  and  sensitive."  It  has  been 
well  said  "  that  we  are  logically  constrained  to  admit 
the  existence  of  some  form  or  organ  which  is  not  of 

^    this  earth,  and  which  survives  dissolution,  if  we  re- 


y 


THE   SEEN   AND   THE   UNSEEN.  21 

gard  the  principle  of  continuity  and  the  doctrine  of  a 
future  state  as  both  true."  "  There  is,"  says  the  Apos- 
tle Paul  (uot  there  shall  be),  "  a  spiritual  body."  "  We 
have  a  building  of  God,  an  house  not  made  with 
hands,  eternal  in  the  heavens." 

The  next  stage  of  existence  is,  then,  a  conditioned 
life,  otherwise  we  could  not  retain  our  individuality. 
And  now  I  remark  that  the  law  of  continuity  de- 
mands that  this  life  should  be  subject  to  an  endless 
process  of  development.  What  may  finally  come  to 
us  as  tlie  result  of  this  development  we  are  probably 
as  unable  to  conjecture  as  the  infant  is  to  forecast  the'^ 
experiences  of  his  maturity.  It  is  much  easier 
to  grasp  the  conception  of  a  future  life  than  it  is  to  -7- 
apprehend  the  endlessness  of  that  life.  Having  once 
begun  to  be,  shall  I  never  cease  to  be?  Will  this 
conscious  soul  of  mine  continue  to  exist  and  assert 
itself  after  the  visible  universe  upon  which  I  now 
look  has  burnt  out  its  last  spark  and  vanished  ? 
Shall  I  live  as  long  as  God  lives  ?  We  read  that 
Christ,  in  bringing  life  and  immortality  to  light,  has  ^^ 
''abolished  death."  If,  then,  death  is  abolished,  I 
must  live  forever.  My  powers  give  way  in  the 
attempt  to  grapple  with  this  stupendous  fact ;  but  I 
accept  it  as  revealed  by  One  who  knew  whereof  He 
spake,  —  I  accept  it,  because  existence  would  be  in- 
tolerable on  any  other  condition. 

CHARACTERISTICS   OF   SPIRITUAL  BEING. 

I  next  observe  that  spiritual  being,  however  it  may 
be  developed  in  the  future,  must  always  retain  the 


^>^ 


22        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

same  characteristics  of  identity.  In  this  primary 
stage  of  being  it  has  relations  to  a  physical  universe 
which  in  a  certain  sense  are  temporary,  but  there 
must  also  be  certain  inseparable  relations  between 
this  life  and  the  next,  in  order  to  the  continuance  of 
our  personal  individuality.  The  consciousness  of  the 
Ego  must  be  eternal,  and  in  order  to  this,  the  power 
of  memory  must  continue,  •  and  the  same  essential 
activities  of  the  mind  remain  intact.  Although  it  is 
not  to  be  believed  that  our  future  life  is  to  be  on 
another  and  a  higher  plane  of  the  physical,  I  am  not 
certain  that  there  may  not  be  something  in  it  analo- 
gous to  the  physical.  Why  may  there  not  be  some- 
thing there  corresponding  to  what  we  here  call 
natural  science,  and  art,  and  all  those  occupations 
which  are  neither  menial  nor  sensual  ?  Why  may 
there  not  be  a  field  for  the  exercise  of  those  peculiar 
gifts  with  which  different  men  are  endowed,  and  to 
which  they  have  here,  in  a  measure,  devoted  their 
lives  ?  The  laws  of  art  and  science  are  as  immutable 
and  eternal  as  the  law  of  morals.  They  proceed  from 
the  same  divine  source,  and  have  their  seat  in  the 
bosom  of  God.  It  is  a  very  dreary  prospect,  if  we 
are  to  anticipate  an  immortal  existence  with  no 
variety  of  employment,  and  with  nothing  to  interest 
us  there  corresponding  to  the  best  and  noblest  things 
which  concern  us  here.  The  eternal  life  may  be  one 
perpetual  act  of  worship,  but  that  worship  will  not  be 
in  a  monotone.  God  will  be  adored  in  the  study  of 
his  manifold  works,  and  in  the  exercise  of  the  mani- 
fold powers  which  he  has  given  us.     I  believe  that 


THE  SEEN  AND  THE  UNSEEN.         23 

everything  seen  and  temporal,  which  is  not  of  the 
nature  of  sin,  is  a  type  and  symbol  and  prophecy  of 
something  unseen  and  eternal,  only  purer  and  more 
glorious.  Altogether  too  much  is  said  about  tlie  rest 
of  heaven,  delightful  as  the  rest  from  carking  cares 
and  spiritual  contentions  and  corroding  anxieties 
must  be ;  but  some  people  seem  to  think  that  to  -^ 
die  is  only  "  to  lie  down  to  pleasant  and  everlasting 
dreams."  If  we  are  to  live  forever,  I  presume  that 
there  will  be  something  for  us  to  do  forever,  —  some- 
thing beside  enjoyment. 

_  The  light  that  is  thrown  upon  the  next  stage  of 
existence  in  the  Scriptures  is  designedly  somewhat  X, 
general  and  limited.  All  the  direct  information  on 
the  subject  which  they  give  could  be  condensed  into  a 
very  small  space.  The  eschatology  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment could  all  be  written  on  a  single  page,  and  very 
much  in  the  New  Testament  which  has  been  sup- 
posed to  relate  to  the  subject  is  now  referred  to  the 
setting  up  of  the  kingdom  of  truth  and  righteousness 
here  on  earth.  "The  kingdom  to  come"  in  many 
cases  means  simply  the  kingdom  of  Christ  among 
men.  Eevelation  was  not  intended  to  gratify  our 
curiosity,  and  it  would  not  be  well  to  make  the  veil  -«^ 
which  hangs  between  us  and  the  future  too  trans- 
lucent. Our  work  is  here,  and  if  that  work  is  prop- 
erly done,  we  can  afford  to  wait  until  an  actual 
entrance  into  the  next  world  reveals  its  mysteries. 
The  time  is  not  most  profitably  employed  which  is 
spent  in  speculating  about  these  mysteries. 

But  we  do  want  to  be  at  rest  so  far  as  the  fact  that 


< 


24         CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

there  is  such  a  world  is  concerned,  and  it  is  most  de- 
sirable that  we  should  know  enough  about  it  for  the 
proper  regulation  of  the  present  life.  With  this 
knowledge  we  may  be  content.  And  let  us  be  thank- 
ful for  any  help,  let  it  come  from  whatever  quarter 
it  may,  which  may  be  of  service  in  determining  the 
great  fact  that  there  is  a  spiritual  as  well  as  a  natural 
life,  and  that  the  power  abides  after  the  latter  is  over. 
Theologians  ought  to  be  careful  lest  they  encumber 
the  truth  of  our  immortality  with  notions  and  theories 
which  the  man  of  science  finds  it  impossible  to  re- 
ceive, and  the  philosopher  should  be  on  his  guard 
against  any  such  prejudgment  of  the  point  at  issue 
as  will  prevent  him  from  giving  due  consideration  to 
the  proof  by  which  that  point  is  established.  There 
can  be  no  collision  between  science  and  faith  so  long 
{,  as  science  confines  itself  to  its  legitimate  sphere,  and 
faith  does  not  allow  itself  to  degenerate  into  a  super- 
stition. Science  cannot  take  a  single  firm  step,  unless 
it  has  faith  in  something  that  is  unseen  and  spiritual ; 
and  faith  is  a  blind  guide,  unless  it  has  eyes  to  see 
what  lies  around.  I  do  not  think  that  the  two  par- 
ties will  reach  the  final  goal  of  absolute  and  certain 
truth  by  separating  and  going  different  ways ;  let 
them  travel  together,  the.  one  as  the  interpreter  of 
the  seen,  and  the  other  as  the  interpreter  of  the 
unseen.  The  material  will  help  to  explain  the 
spiritual,  and  the  spiritual  will  disclose  the  end  for 
which  the  material  exists. 


THE  SEEN  AND  THE  UNSEEN.         25 
THE  HOW  OF  THE  UNIVERSE  AND  THE  WHY. 

"  A  division  as  old  as  Aristotle  separates  specula- 
tors into  two  great  classes,  —  those  who  study  the  How 
of  the  universe,  and  those  who  study  the  Why.  All 
men  of  science  are  embraced  in  the  former  of  these, 
all  men  of  religion  in  the  latter."  I  would  like  to 
understand  both,  if  this  is  possible ;  but  if  I  must 
choose  between  the  two,  I  would  rather  know  the 
reason  for  which  I  exist  than  the  mode  by  which  I  "^ 
exist.  The  one  is  an  end,  the  other  only  a  means.  If 
it  is  impossible  to  discover  the  end,  or  if  that  end, 
when  it  is  supposed  to  be  discovered,  does  not  seem 
to  be  such  as  justifies  the  elaborate  process  by  which 
it  is  reached;  if  all  the  magnificent  discoveries  of 
science  land  us  in  the  conclusion  that  the  universe 
is  only  a  great  clock,  put  together  and  weighted  and 
wound  up  to  run  for  a  certain  period,  and  then,  when 
it  has  struck  the  last  hour,  to  fall  to  pieces  and 
become  resolved  into  the  materials  of  which  it  was  , 
originally  made,  —  the  clock  having  marked  the  pas-  ^ 
sage  of  time,  faithfully  and  truly,  as  long  as  the  flow 
of  events  continued,  but  the  time  itself  leaving  behind 
no  permanent  results  which  abide  after  the  clock 
has  ceased  to  strike,  —  if  the  end  of  existence  is  ex- 
hausted in  the  process  by  which'' that  existence  is  regis- 
tered and  terminates  with  the  process  ;  or,  again,  if  the 
universe  is  only  a  huge  electric  wheel,  throwing  out 
sparks  of  life  which  glisten  for  an  instant  in  the 
darkness  and  vanish  forever ;  or,  again,  if  man  is  only 
the  efflorescence  of  a  physical  compound,  that  buds 


26        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

and  blossoms,  and  then  dies  as  soon  as  the  soil  fur- 
nishes no  further  sustenance,  —  why,  then  the  uni- 
>C  verse  is  a  sham  and  man  an  impertinence.  All  comes 
to  nothing  in  the  end ;  consciousness  ceases  when  the 
phosphorus  in  the  brain  ceases  to  burn,  and,  with  the 
end  of  consciousness,  the  material  world  might  as  well 
shrivel  and  die  and  come  to  nothing  also. 

This  is  the  teaching  of  a  school  of  science,  "  falsely 
so  called,"  which  mad  materialistic  diviners,  with 
many  high-sounding  words,  now  offer  to  our  accept- 
ance. 

It  is  not  easy  to  keep  within  the  'limits  of  a  frigid 
logic,  in  dealing  with  matters  in  which  all  our  high- 
est aspirations  and  all  our  profoundest  feelings  are 
concerned.  There  is  a  spiritual  department  of  our 
nature  which  is  as  real  as  the  monad,  and  as  vital  as 
the  physical  affinities  of  the  body  or  the  working  of 
the  reason  and  understanding.  All  that  is  beautiful 
and  all  that  is  frightful,  all  that  appeals  to  the  imagi- 
nation and  the  emotions  and  the  sense  of  rectitude, 
centres  here.  This  is  mere  cloudland  to  the  material- 
ist, —  like  that  superb  display  which  sometimes  ap- 
pears in  the  western  horizon  as  the  day  is  drawing  to 
a  close,  when  the  azure  and  vermilion  and  green  and 
golden  hues  shape  themselves  into  forms  more  beau- 
tiful tlian  anything  ever  seen  on  the  plane  of  earth ; 
but  all  which,  he  tells  us,  would  prove  to  be  a  sad 
delusion,  if  we  should  be  suddenly  transported  to  the 
very  region  of  those  gorgeous  clouds,  for  then  they 
would  be  resolved  into  a  dull,  chill,  leaden  mist,  ob- 
scuring the  sun  and  the  st^rs  and  the  earth. 


THE  SEEN  AND  THE  UNSEEN.         27 

It  is  very  true  that  what  a  man  sees  depends  upon 
the  place  where  he  stands,  and  it  is  very  possible  for 
one  to  take  such  a  position  as  must,  of  necessity,  rule 
out  all  tlie  beauty  and  glory  from  the  universe.  But 
is  the  splendor  of  the  autumnal  sunset  any  the  less 
a  i-eality  because  it  is  painted  with  drops  of  dew,  — 
the  same  material  which  the  machinist  uses  to  start 
his  engine  ? 

Which  is  the  more  real,  if  potency  be  the  measure 
of  reality,  —  the  solid  shaft  of  granite,  or  the  impon- 
derable lightning  which  shivers  it  to  fragments  ?  Do 
we  not  approach  -the  region  of  power  just  in  propor- 
tion as  we  pass  from  the  material  to  the  spiritual, 
from  the  solid  to  the  fluid  ?  .The  water  grinds  the 
rock,  the  heated  air  dissipates  the  water,  the  electric 
influence  decomposes  the  air,  and  the  will  of  man  ex- 
cites and  directs  the  electric  force.  The  granite  pile 
on  Bunker  Hill  oscillates  every  day,  as  the  warm 
rays  of  the  sun  play  upon  its  eastern  and  its  west- 
ern side. 

THE   SEEN  AND  THE  UNSEEN. 

This  is  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter, — 
"Nature  represents  things  spiritual."  (The  Seen  is  ^ 
the  type  and  symbol  of  the  Unseen,  and  that  which 
is  seen  is  temporal,  while  the  things  which  are  un- 
seen are  eternal.  \  Nothing  can  be  seen  but  forms, 
and  these  are  in^^heir  very  nature  transient  and 
changeable.  The  substance  of  these  forms  is  inde- 
structible. We  live  in  two  worlds,  one  temporal  and 
the  other  eternal, —  the  world  of  forms  and  the  world 


^ 


28        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

of  realities.  With  the  one  we  come  into  communi- 
cation by  our  senses,  with  the  other  we  come  into 
communication  by  the  soul.  Material  things  are  the 
symbols  of  spiritual  tilings,  and  we  are  able  to  express 
the  latter  only  through  the  medium  of  the  former. 
The  next  stage  of  existence  will  be  simply  the  un- 
folding or  development  of  this  primary  stage  of  being. 
There  is  no  arbitrary  line  separating  the  temporal 
from  the  eternal ;  the  one  passes  over  into  the  other 
by  natural,  orderly  law.  The  cliange  induced  by 
death  cannot  in  any  way  affect  our  personal  identity. 
"We  must  retain  a  memory  of  the  past  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  possessing  the  same  mental  and  moral 
qualities  by  which  we  are  individualized  here  on 
earth.  The  time  has  been  when  you  might  hear 
the  great  congregation  sing  such  strains  as  these  :  — 

"The  living  know  that  they  must  die, 
But  all  the  dead  forgotten  lie  ; 
Their  memory  and  their  sense  is  gone, 
Alike  unknowing  and  unknown." 

The  words  had  a  solemn  sound,  and  it  was  not 
noticed  that  they  taught  the  doctrine  of  annihila- 
tion. 

Neither  is  there  any  propriety  in  speaking  of  the 
unseen  world  as  a  "  final  state,"  as  if  we  had  entered 
upon  a  fixed,  unchangeable,  and  completed  condition 
of  being.  There  is  no  point  of  finality  in  human 
existence.  However  high  we  may  climb,  there  will 
always  be  a  higher  summit  left  unsealed,  something 
new  to  be  learned,  some  loftier  attainment  to  be 
reached. 


THE  SEEN  AND  THE  UNSEEN.         29 

And,  if  we  are  to  retain  our  personal  identity,  — 
without  which  immortality  would  not  be  a  gift  worth 
taking,  —  those  whom  we  have  known  and  loved  here 
we  must  know  and  love  hereafter.  It  would  be  a 
dreary  thing  if  we  thought  that  we  were  going  to 
a  land  of  strangers.  Is  it  to  be  supposed  that  the 
emotional  part  of  our  nature  will  be  extinguished,  or 
so  modified,  that  we  shall  cease  forever  to  love  that, 
which,  here  on  earth,  was  the  centre  of  our  most  earnest 
and  tender  affection  ?  Shall  we  be  so  overwhelmed 
by  the  glory  of  consorting  with  angels  that  we  shall 
cease  any  longer  to  care  for  the  poor  feUow-creatures 
with  whom  we  wept  and  toiled  when  we  were  pilgrims 
together  on  earth  ?  Will  Raphael  and  Gabriel  and 
Michael  be  nearer  and  dearer  to  us  than  the  child  we 
once  lost,  or  the  father  and  mother  who  taught  us 
how  to  pray  ?  Those  who  have  gone  before  cannot 
forget  those  whom  they  have  left  behind ;  and  is  it  to 
be  supposed  that  their  cup  of  happiness  can  be  full 
if  they  never  expect  to  welcome  their  friends  in 

**  The  bright  and  blessed  country,  — the  home  of  God's  elect "  ? 

I  feel  that  I  am  forbidden,  by  the  nature  of  the 
occasion,  from  trespassing  any  further  upon  the  do- 
main of  feeling,  and  I  therefore  close  by  saying,  that, 
as  I  understand  the  matter,  the  distinction  which 
separates  the  Seen  from  the  Unseen  is  not  determined 
by  any  supposed  differentiation  of  spirit  from  matter. 
I  do  not  know  that  any  distinct  line,  dividing  the 
two,  exists,  and  if  it  does  exist,  I  do  not  know  where 
it  runs;  but  the  distinction  is  best  defined  by  the 


X. 


30        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

words  phenomenal  and  actual,  —  the  forms  and  the 
realities.  Tlie  things  which  are  seen  are  passing  by 
like  a  swift  panorama,  ever  changing,  ever  fading, 
y^  ever  decaying;  but  the  things  which  are  not  seen 
abide  forever.  Which  do  you  care  for  most  ?  Are 
you  mistaking  shadows  for  realities,  and  realities  for 
shadows  ? 


11. 

MORAL  LAW  IN  ITS  RELATIONS  TO  PHYSICAL 
SCIENCE   AND   TO   POPULAR   RELIGION. 

By  president  E.  G.  ROBINSON,  D.D.,  LL.D. 


II. 


MORAL  LAW  IN  ITS  RELATIONS  TO  PHYSICAL 
SCIENCE  AND   TO   POPULAR   RELIGION. 

By  president  E.  G.  ROBINSON,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

"XTO  word  plays  a  more  conspicuous  part  in  modern 
■^  ^  thought,  and  none  is  more  loosely  used,  than  the 
word  "  law."  Originally  used  in  a  single  sense,  its 
meaning  was  unambiguous  and  universally  recognized. 
It  is  now  employed  in  many  senses,  some  of  which 
are  plain  and  have  become  necessary,  others  are 
obscure  and  doubtful,  and  others  still  it  is  difficult, 
if  not  impossible  to  justify.  Its  primary  meaning 
undoubtedly  was,  "  a  rule  of  conduct  jDrescribed  and 
enforced  by  some  kind  of  authority."  In  this  sense 
of  the  word,  law  was  essential  to  the  continuance  of 
individual  life,  as  well  as  to  the  formation  of  indi- 
vidual character.  It  was  equally  necessary  for  the 
organization  and  conservation  of  society. 

Natural  science,  borrowing  the  term  "  law,"  has  given 
it  a  wide  range  of  application.  Observers  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  nature,  noticing  that  these  always  occurred 
in  an  orderly  sequence,  declared  their  occurrence  to 
be  by  law.     Physical  laws,  therefore,  in  the  sense  of 

8 


34        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

rules  according  to  which  physical  phenomena  of 
given  classes  always  occur,  became  a  needed  and  a 
familiar  expression.  Out  of-  this  signification  in  the 
progress  of  science  have  grown  other  meanings,  to 
which  it  is  not  necessary  here  to  advert. 

But  whatever  may  be  said  of  the  new  senses  which 
science  has  attached  to  the  word  "  law,"  it  must  be 
admitted  to  have  thrown  new  light  on  the  original 
meaning  of  the  phrase  "moral  law."  It  has  sent 
back  to  ethics  its  borrowed  term  endowed  with  a 
widened  and  deepened  significance;  the  metaphori- 
cal use  of  it  has  enabled  us  to  get  a  deeper  insight 
into  the  fulness  of  its  literal  sense.  How  this  has 
been  accomplished  forms  the  first  half  of  our  present 
discussion. 

PROPERTIES   OF   lilATTER. 

Natural  law  always  implies  and  reveals  some  kind 
of  force,  denoting  a  rule  according  to  which  the  force 
always  acts.  But  the  rule  is  not  an  arbitrary  decree ; 
it  represents  no  mere  imposed  order  of  sequence,  but 
expresses  that  which  makes  the  sequence  orderly. 
Its  origin,  so  far  as  matter  itself  is  concerned,  must 
be  in  the  properties  of  matter,  or  in  the  conditions 
under  which  matter  is  found  uniformly  to  exist. 
These  remaining  ever  the  same,  the  modes  or  laws  of 
their  manifestation  must  continue  unchangeably  the 
same. 

Modern  science  has  made  us  familiar  with  the 
phrases,  "mechanical  laws"  and  "chemical  laws." 
Whatever  the  explanation  that  may  be  given  of  the 


MORAL  LAW.  35 

difference  between  these,  that  explanation  will  be 
found  in  the  last  analysis  to  rest  on  the  account 
given  of  the  subtile  properties  of  matter.  Matter 
being  found  to  be  what  it  is,  the  laws  which  deter- 
mine the  order  of  its  phenomena  are  necessarily  what 
they  are.  Two  classes  of  properties  may  be  set  to 
work  in  one  and  the  same  substance  at  one  and  the 
same  instant.  Thus,  an  explosive  substance  enclosed 
in  a  retort  with  a  reagent  may  be  set  to  work  chemi- 
cally, and  its  bulk  so  expanded  as  mechanically  to 
blow  tlie  retort  into  fragments.  Our  respiration  is 
mechanical,  and  the  accompanying  oxygenation  of  our 
blood  is  chemical ;  and  the  two  sets  of  laws,  the 
mechanical  and  the  chemical,  that  rule  conjointly  in 
these  phenomena,  so  rule  because  the  properties  of 
matter  of  which  our  bodies  are  composed  necessarily 
so  reveal  themselves.  Whatever  may  be  the  dis- 
tinctions, therefore,  in  our  conceptions  of  physical 
law,  the  law  necessarily  exists  because  necessitated 
by  the  properties  of  matter.  To  know  and  under- 
stand the  modes  or  laws  of  physical  phenomena  is 
to  know  and  understand  all  that  is  knowable  of  the 
nature  of  matter. 

PROPERTIES  OF  THE  PERSONAL  BEING. 

Corresponding  to  the  properties  of  matter  are  also 
the  properties  of  the  personal  being.  Nothing  exists 
which  does  not  exist  in  a  given  mode  and  with  a 
given  constitution.  That  in  us  which  thinks  and 
feels  and  wills,  has  its  own  constitution,  and  acts 
under  its  own  unvarying  laws,  as  well  as  the  bodily 


36        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

i 

organism  which  executes  our  volitions.  Some  of 
these  laws  of  the  personality  are  distinctively  moral ; 
and  moral  laws  are  just  as  much  a  revelation  of  the 
moral  properties  of  the  personal  being  as  physical 
laws  are  a  revelation  of  the  properties  of  matter. 
The  properties  of  the  one  do  not  more  immediately 
necessitate  its  laws  than  do  the  properties  of  the 
other.  Personal  existence  is  only  in  given  modes 
and  under  fixed  conditions;  any  description  which 
can  be  given  of  these  modes  as  moral  will  be  found 
to  be  equivalent  to  a  description  or  statement  of 
the  moral  laws  under  which  all  personal  beings  are 
found  to  exist.  To  know  and  understand  moml  laws 
is  to  know  and  understand  all  that  is  knowable  of 
the  moral  nature  of  man ;  and  it  is  so  because  the 
phrases  ''  original  moral  nature  "  and  "  moral  law  "  are 
descriptive  of  one  and  the  same  thing. 

LAW  AS   FORMULA  AND  AS   CONSTITUTIVE  PRINCIPLE. 

Thus,  there  are  two  senses  in  which  the  phrase 
"  moral  law  "  may  be  used,  and  which  should  be  care- 
fully distinguished.  The  one  conceives  it  as  a  con- 
stitutive principle  of  personality ;  the  other  conceives 
it  as  a  precept,  a  command,  a  statute  which  formu- 
lates the  principle  into  an  authoritative  rule  of  action. 
There  is  necessarily  recognized,  therefore,  in  the  use 
of  the  word  "law"  what  in  technical  language  we 
may  call  the  objective  precept  and  the  subjective 
principle.  The  subjective  principle,  as  a  property 
of  the  personal  being,  always  underlies  the  idea  of 
moral  law,  just  as  the  properties  regulative  of  physi- 


MORAL   LAW.  37 

cal  force  underlie  the  idea  of  physical  law.  As  the 
constitutive  properties  of  matter  manifest  themselves 
in  physical  laws,  so  the  constitutive  properties  or 
principles  of  the  personal  being  manifest  themselves 
in  given  modes  or  according  to  moral  laws.  No  con- 
ception of  moral  law,  therefore,  is  complete  which 
does  not  regard  it  as  a  principle  of  being  as  well  as  a 
formal  command. 

But  just  here  there  are  two  points  of  distinction 
between  physical  law  and  moral  law  which  should 
be  made  and  remembered.  The  first  of  these  is,  that 
while  all  statutory  law  is  declaratory,  physical  law  for- 
mulated is  simply  declaratory  of  what  is  necessarily 
true,  of  what  always  has  been  and  always  must  be 
true  of  all  material  phenomena ;  moral  law  as  precept, 
on  the  contrary,  is  the  declaration  of  what  ought 
to  be,  and  what  from  the  very  nature  of  a  rational 
intelligence  must  be,  if  the  typical  idea  of  the  per- 
sonal being  is  ever  to  be  realized.  —  The  other  point 
is,  that  while  moral  law  may  be  broken,  physical  law 
never  can  be  broken.  You  may  arrest  one  physical 
force  by  the  application  of  another,  but  you  never 
can  violate  the  law  according  to  which  the  force  acts. 
You  can,  by  appliances,  arrest  the  force  of  gravitation ; 
you  cannot,  by  any  possibility,  violate  the  law  of  gravi- 
tation. I  know  that  in  popular  language  gravitation 
is  oftentimes  spoken  of  as  itself  a  law ;  but  gravitation 
is  the  expression  or  action  of  a  given  force ;  its  law  is 
that  the  force  always  acts  "  directly  as  the  mass  and 
inversely  as  the  square  of  the  distance."  That  law 
you  can  in  no  sense  break  or  violate ;  and  the  force 


38        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

which  acts  in  accordance  with  it,  whatever  else  you 
can  do  with  it,  you  never  can  suspend.  But  in  moral 
law  there  is  always  implied  a  force  of  will  which  is  to 
be  regulated ;  it  is  to  tlie  will  that  moral  precepts  are 
always  addressed.  The  precepts  can  be  voluntarily 
complied  with,  or  they  can  be  voluntarily  over-ridden. 
We  can  break  the  objective  rule  because  we  can 
suppress  or  suspend  the  subjective  principle.  The 
constitutive  properties  of  a  finite  moral  being  might 
prompt  him  instinctively  to  worship  the  supremely 
best  Being ;  by  force  of  will  he  may  bring  himself  to 
worship  the  supremely  worst  being.  The  self-acting 
nature  of  an  unperverted  man  might  prompt  always 
and  spontaneously  to  tell  the  truth,  but  he  can  will 
habitually  to  falsify  and  mislead.  But  if  the  external 
precept  be  true  to  the  internal  principle,  if  it  com- 
mand only  what  that  exacts  ;  then,  if  broken,  its  pen- 
alty can  no  more  be  escaped  than  personal  identity 
can  be  changed. 

IMMEDIATE   OR   SECONDARY   SOURCE   OF   LAW. 

Here  we  see  the  immediate  or  secondary  source  of 
moral  law.  All  law  has  its  immediate  origin  in  what- 
ever is  ruled  by  it,  —  the  physical  in  matter,  the  moral 
in  the  human  soul.  As  statutes,  the  moral  simply 
formulate  what  is  eternally  true  of  the  human  person- 
ality as  such. 

But  here  let  us  not  mistake.  Moral  law  is  not 
derived  from  every,  or  from  any,  personal  being  now 
found  in  life.  Human  nature  is  exceedingly  diverse, 
is  an  extremely  variable  quantity ;  and  the  actions  of 


MORAL  LAW.  39 

every  man,  when  understood,  are  sure  to  reveal  the 
moral  qualities  of  his   innermost  nature,   and  that 
nature  may  be  radically  perverse.     But  liis  acts  will 
be  in  accordance  with  the  ruling  principles  of  his 
existing  nature.     He  will,  by  necessity,  obey  the  rul- 
ing law  of  his  being  as  it  now  is.     And  it  is  in  this 
explanation  that  w^e  see  the  meaning  of  the  language        ^• 
of  the  Apostle  Paul  when  he  says,  "  I  find  another       ^^ 
law  in  my  members  waning  against  Jhe  law  of  my     "^ 
mind."     He  saw  the  law  of  a  superinduced  and  per-      ^ 
verse  nature ;  and  he  saw  the  law  of  his  original  and        ^' 
deeper  nature.     A  superinduced  nature  may  manifest     \^ 
itself  in  acts  of  uniform  perversity ;  but  they  are  acts    *  y 
whose  uniformity  shows  them  to  be  according  to  law, 
—  a  "  law   in  the  members,"  it  may  be,  and  yet  a       o 
law  from  within  the  person  acting.     There  is  also    v'< 
the  profounder  and  original  or  ideal  nature  wdth  its 
deeper  law,  of  which  conscience  takes  cognizance,  and 
that  law  is  what  the  Apostle  calls  the  law  of  his 
"  mind." 

But  what  we  are  now  dealing  with  is.  the  formu- 
lated duties  of  man :    the  laws  which   declare  the      ^. 
unalterable  obligations  of  all  men;   the  moral  laws    O 
which  were  codified  by  Moses,  which  were  expounded 
and  illustrated  by  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  which  are  now     J^ 
incorporated  into  the  moral  code  of  Christendom  ;  and    >^ 
these  simply  represent  man  as  he  was  intended  to  be, 
as  he  is  intended  to  become.  (Jhey  constitute  collect- 
ively  a  word-picture  of  the  ideal  many    They  describe  r 
what  will  always  be  true  of  the  perfect  man.     They 
tell  what  w^as  actualized  in  the  perfect  man  of  Naza- 


40        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

reth.  The  outlines  of  a  perfect  manhood  had  been 
drawn  by  Moses ;  Jesus  filled  up  the  picture  with 
the  color  and  warmth  of  real  life.  The  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  was  simply  an  exposition  of  the  law  of 
^C^  Moses ;  that  exposition  irradiated  and  made  it  lumi- 
nous for  all  time.  And  what  the  Expounder  said  and 
did  was  only  the  spontaneous  expression  of  what  he 
was.  He  was  the  moral  law  incarnate.  In  him  and 
his  life  it  was  made  legible  to  all  eyes  and  articulate 
to  all  ears.  His  teachings  were  not  reasoned  con- 
clusions, but  intuited  truths.  What  he  enjoined  on 
others  he  was ;  and  he  was  all  that  the  law,  as  insti- 
tuted by  Moses,  required,  and  all  that  the  boundless 
fulness  of  his  own  exposition  has  laid  open  to  the 
wondering  gaze  of  men.  He  was  at  once  the  Arche- 
typal Being  in  whose  likeness  our  nature  was  origi- 
nally fashioned ;  and  he  was  the  typical  man  after 
whose  example  every  clear-sighted  man  has  felt  that 
his  own  life  ought  to  be  regulated. 

RESPONSE   OF  THE   MORAL   CONSCIOUSNESS. 

But  here  you  may  ask  for  the  evidence  that  such 
was  the  secondary  source  of  moral  law.  Take  the 
ethical  teachings  of  Jesus;  address  them  to  men; 
and  where  is  the  man,  whatever  his  pride,  whatever 
/^  his  culture,  whatever  his  philosophy,  or  whatever  his 
vices,  who,  if  you  can  but  secure  his  attention  long 
enough  for  the  teachings  to  flash  their  light  into  his 
consciousness,  will  not  be  humbled  and  startled  by 
a  power  which  he  cannot  resist.  The  ethical  truth, 
which  is  but  another  name  for  law,  if  he  submit  to  it, 


MORAL  LAW.  41 

will  slay  him,  and  in  slaying  will  renew  and  trans- 
form him,  awakening  him  to  obedience  and  quicken- 
ing him  into  a  new  life.  Armed  with  the  power 
of  this  truth,  even  the  unlettered  are  more  than  a 
match  for  prejudice  and  error,  however  these  may  be 
intrenched.  It  is  this  immediateness  of  response  of  ^ 
the  moral  consciousness  of  every  living  man  to  the 
authority  of  moral  truth  which  shows  at  once  its 
power  and  the  proof  of  its  origin. 

The  origin  of  all  other  laws  than  moral,  that  suc- 
ceed in  gettincf  themselves  enforced  and  obeved,  will 
throw  some  light  on  the  point  in  hand.  The  common 
law  of  England,  of  this  country,  of  Christendom,  the 
most  authoritative  and  permanent  of  all  civil  law, 
changes  not,  because  the  facts  of  society  which  it 
represents  are  immutable ;  it  is  simply  the  formu- 
lated recognition  of  some  of  the  deepest  realities  of  X 
society ;  so  long  as  the  realities  remain,  common  law 
cannot  change. 

So  of  all  positive  laws ;  to  secure  observance  of 
them  they  must  represent  the  wants  and  condition  of 
tliose  to  be  controlled  by  them.  Many  a  man  has 
prescribed  for  himself  a  rule  which  he  soon  found  it 
impossible  to  keep.  He  had  misunderstood  himself, 
liis  needs  and  his  possibilities,  and  had  attempted  the 
impracticable.  Legislative  enactments  are  often  found 
to  be  inoperative.  The  legislators  of  every  State  in 
our  Union  are  perpetually  enacting  and  repealing  laws. 
And  still  the  law-books  are  encumbered  with  dead- 
letter  statutes.  And  why  these  endless  changes  and 
the  laws  which  cannot  be  executed  ?    Simply  because 


42        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

y  legislators  fail  to  understand  the  real  and  underlying 
facts  of  society.  When  the  facts  are  comprehended, 
and  society  continues  stable,  to  enact  a  just  law  is  to 
insure  its  fulfilment ;  it  may  almost  be  said  to  fulfil 
itself.  So  long  as  our  legislators  continue  to  grope  in 
the  dark,  guessing  at  the  realities  of  society,  or  aim- 
ing at  imaginary  or  Utopian  results,  so  long  will  our 
statutes  continue  to  involve  the  people  in  uncertainty 
and  vexation. 

The  evident  origin  of  the  Constitutional  laws  of  a 
State  is  specially  instructive  at  this  point.  Written 
Constitutions,  unless  they  represent  the  actual  consti- 
tution of  society,  can  never  supply  a  permanent  gov- 
ernment.    The  Articles  of  Confederation,  under  which 

<^  the  government  of  the  United  States  was  for  twelve 
years  administered,  gave  a  weak,  uncertain,  and  in- 
capable government,  and  they  were  abandoned.  The 
Constitution  under  which  we  now  live,  adopted  by 
the  States  in  1789,  has  given  us  a  stable,  strong,  and 
beneficent  government,  simply  because  that  Constitu- 
tion recognizes  the  great  facts  of  American  society. 
As  the  facts  have  successively  changed,  the  Constitu- 
tion has  been  amended,  and  if  the  facts  of  American 
society  can  remain  as  they  are,  or  change  but  slightly 
and  gradually,  and  the  Constitution  be  wisely  changed 
to  meet  the  changing  wants  and  realities  of  the 
national  life,  then  may  we  have  a  long-continued 
and  beneficent  government;  but  let  the  great  heart  of 
the  American  people  change,  let  the  wants  of  Ameri- 
can society  cease  to  be  what  they  now  are,  let  a  new 
and  strange  national  spirit  spring  up,  and  the  Consti- 


MORAL   LAW.  43 

tution  of  the  United  States  will  soon  be  among  the 
things  of  the  past. 

When  the  Abb(^  Sieyes  had  concentrated  all  the  y 
force  of  his  genius,  all -the  resources  of  his  learning, 
all  the  subtlety  of  his  philosophy,  in  constructing  a 
constitution  for  the  French  Republic,  he  offered  it  to 
the  National  Assembly.  They  smiled,  and  rejected  it. 
"Written  as  it  was  in  the  closet,  it  did  not  represent 
the  existing  facts-  of  French  society.  The  Assembly 
saw  its  impracticability.  It  was  worth  so  much 
waste-paper.  When  John  Locke,  aided  by  the  first 
Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  drew  up  his  "  Fundamental  Con- 
stitutions "  of  the  Colony  of  Carolina,  the  colonists  at-^ 
tempted  a  government  under  them.  The  constitutions 
were  amended ;  they  were  re-amended  ;  the  govern- 
ment was  found  impracticable.  The  instrument  had 
been  drawn  up  by  two  philosophers,  and  drawn  up  for 
an  imaginary  state  of  society ;  when  the  government 
provided  by  it  was  attempted  to  be  enforced  upon  the 
colony,  it  M'as  found  impracticable.  It  speedily  gave 
place  to  a  constitution  that  grew  and  formulated 
itself  into  law  in  accordance  with  the  wants  and  real 
condition  of  the  colonists. 

Thus  the  immediate  source  of  all  positive  laws  is 
in  the  constitutive  natures  of  those  upon  whom  the 
laws  are  to  be  enforced ;  and  so  also  the  source  of  all 
real  moral  laws  is  in  the  nature  of  those  who  are  to 
be  ruled  by  them.  They  are  derived  not  from  the 
accidental  conditions  of  man,  not  from  the  surface  of 
human  nature  despoiled  and  corrupted,  but  from  the 
constitutive  principles  of  man  as  man. 


44  CHRIST   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT. 


PRIMAL   SOURCE   OF  MORAL  LAW. 

So  much  for  the  immediate  or  secondary  source  of 
moral  law.  But  what  shall  we  say  of  its  primary  and 
original  source  ?  Where  shall  we  look  for  this  ?  In 
utility,  in  the  theory  of  evolution,  or  in  the  arche- 
typal nature  of  a  Supreme  Being  ? 

The  ethical  principles  now  regarded  as  authori- 
tative among  the  foremost  nations  of  the  world  are 
found  substantially,  as  we  have  before  said,  in  the 
ten  commandments  of  Moses.  A  statement  of  the 
principles,  final  and  exhaustive,  is  given  in  the  teach- 
ings of  Jesus.  Out  of  these  teachings  has  sprung  all 
that  is  ethically  distinctive  in  the  leading  civilizations 
of  the  world.  The  moral  law  of  Moses  has  now  for 
some  thirty-five  centuries  been  on  trial.  The  ethics 
of  Jesus  for  eighteen  centuries  and  a  half  have  been 
subjected  to  every  species  of  criticism  which  the 
progress  of  learning  and  science  has  made  available. 
And  yet  the  foundations  of  morality  throughout 
*I  Christendom,  notwithstanding  the  boasts  of  assail- 
ants and  the  alarm  of  the  timid,  still  abide. 

Suppose  now  that  Moses  borrowed  from  the  wis- 
dom of  Egypt,  that  by  observation  and  induction  the 
Egyptians  had  arrived  at  the  conclusions  which  he  ap- 
4~^propriated ;  then  the  Egyptians  saw  what  was  useful 
because  they  saw  what  the  human  soul  required. 
That  Moses  himself  could  have  been  accurate  and  wide 
enough  in  his  observations  to  have  reached  generali- 
zations in  morals  which  no  people  has  yet  been  able 
to  improve  upon,  is  incredible.     That  the  Egyptians 


MORAL  LAW.  45      ^ 

had  reached   them   is  conjectured,  but  not  proved. 
That  they  could  have  been  forged  in  the  name  of 
Moses,  at  a  much   later   period  of  Jewish  history,      ^ 
there  is  nothing  in  that  history  to  warrant  us  in  be- 
lievinfT.     Men  who  could  have  committed  such  a  for- 
gery  would   have    been  incapable   of  the   requisite 
moral  elevation.     The  statement  of  Moses  that   he 
received   the   commands   from   Jehovah    is  not   yet\_^ 
shown  to  be  false ;  and  assuredly  there  was  nothing  v^^^ 
either  in  the  character  or  in  the  times  of  Jesus  to         * 
warrant  the  notion  that  he  could  have  appropriated    v^ 
the  inductions  of  his  day.  r^,-^ 

Turn  we  now  to  the  moc^ified  utilitarianism  of  the     '^ 
theory  of  evolution.    The  great  apostle  of  that  theory, 
Mr.  Spencer,  tells  us  that  the  race  has  now  evolved 
to  a  stage  where,  with  fewest  possible  exceptions,  the     vX 
best  w^e  can  do  in  our  moral  choices   is  to  choose    ^  - 
the  least  wrong.     And,  singularly  enough,  "among 
the  best  examples  of  absolutely  right "  he  mentions 
one  which,  he  says,  existed  "  before  social  evolution 
.  began."     But  in  his  discussion  "  of  absolute  morality  "    /S 
A  he   dwells!  upon  a  state  of  society,  yet  future,  but    .0 
sure  to  come,  in  which  every  one  will  always  do  only    ^ 
what  is  absolutely  right,  j  On  what  grounds,  with  his      ^ 
theory  of  evolution,  he^n  venture  to  conceive  such      ^ 
a  condition  of  society,  he  has  not  stated ;  certainly     v^ 
on  his  theory  the  first  vertebrate  could  form  no  con- 
ception of  the  life  and  advanced  condition  of  an  an-     J 
thropoid    ape,  nor  could  the  anthropoid   conjecture     « 
even  the  lowest  stajje  of  rational  existence,  nor  the     -^ 


^1 


first   rational   being  the   advanced   civilization  now 


•t3 


^ 


*A 


46        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

existing  ;  and  how,  on  this  theory,  any  one  can  now 
assume  to  know  what  in  the  final  stage  and  goal  of 
evolution  the  condition  of  liuman  society  will  be,  is 
assuredly  a  puzzle,  unless  indeed  moral  laws  as  com- 
mands to  absolute  right  already  lurk  in  the  human 
soul,  and  have  a  source,  both  secondary  and  primary, 
with  which  evolution  cannot  intermeddle.  The  truth 
is,  that  the  evolution  theory,  after  granting  all  that 
it  can  claim,  can  explain  at  its  best  only  the  origin 
and  development  of  the  moral  sentiment,  and  never 
in  any  sense  the  origin  of  those  great  moral  laws 
which,  when  enunciated,  carry  their  own  self- witness- 
ing authority  home  to  the  heart  of  every  one  that 
hears  them.  And  it  is  extremely  doubtful  whether 
even  the  moral  sentiment  could  be  developed  except 
through  some  kind  of  apprehension  of  moral  law  as 
it  shines  out,  dimly  it  may  be,  through  the  social  en- 
vironments which  Mr.  Spencer  regards  as  so  efficient 
in  evolving  the  moral  nature. 

But  if  the  primal  origin  of  moral  laws  can  be 
found  neither  in  utility  nor  in  evolution,  can  they 
be  found  in  the  infinitely  perfect  nature  of  a 
supreme  and  archetypal  Being  ?  We  say  not,  in  a 
supreme  will,  for  will  might  be  suspected  of  arbi- 
trariness or  caprice,  but  in  a  nature  which  is  abso- 
lutely perfect. 

In  support  of  a  Divine  origin,  let  us  look  for  a 
moment  at  the  argument  from  the  unimprovableness 
of  moral  law.  Our  knowledge  of  physical  laws  is  per- 
petually advancing.  New  disclosures  of  the  secrets 
of  nature  which  require  new  formulas  are  being  con- 


MORAL  LAW.  47 

tiuually  announced.  To  our  progress  in  the  discovery 
of  these  secrets,  and  in  the  formulation  of  laws  to 
represent  them,  there  are  no  apparent  limits.  As  old 
theories  and  conjectured  laws  have  in  the  past  given 
place  to  new  ones,  and  these  to  still  newer,  so  may 
the  progress  be  still  onward  indefinitely. 

But  moral  laws  —  whatever  has  been  our  progress 
in  the  knowledge  of  mind,  of  human  physiology,  of 
climatic  influences,  of  social  reactions  —  have  made^ 
no  progress  since  they  were  laid  down  by  the  Author 
of  Christianity.  Human  philosophies,  many  and 
able,  have  been  propounded  —  new  ones  are  still 
propounded  —  as  substitutes  for  the  ethics  of  Chris- 
tianity ;  and  yet  not  one  of  its  principles  has  been 
invalidated,  not  a  new  one  has  been  added  to  them. 
The  moral  law  was  long  ago  completed ;  its  statutes 
have  been  established  forever.  The  largest  intellects 
have  found  amplest  use  for  all  their  powers  in  simply 
explaining  and  applying  them. 

What  the  combined  ingenuity  of  man  has  thus  been 
unable  to  improve,  we  may  justly  conclude  the  com-  X 
bined  ingenuity  of  man  was  incapable  of  originating 
or  of  discovering.  And  that  any  man,  or  that  all 
men,  could  so  read  the  human  soul  as  to  map  out  in 
completeness  for  the  race,  and  for  all  time,  the  whole 
duty  of  man,  is  simply  incredible.  A  more  than 
human  eye  was  needed  to  so  read  the  human  heart  as 
to  tell  once  for  all  the  sum  of  its  wants  and  of  its 
obligations.  The  Omniscient  Mind  that  couJd  thus 
read  and  reveal  the  human  heart  must  have  been  the 
mind  of  which  ours  is  but  a  copy,  —  the  mind  that 


48        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

knew  the  "  substance "  of  man  while  as  yet  it  was 
"imperfect."  No  explanation  of  the  origin  of  the 
moral  nature  of  man  is  more  reasonable  than  that 
which  recognizes  it  as  wrought,  through  whatever 
series  of  second  causes,  after  the  likeness  of  a  Divine 
original.  To  that  original,  then,  we  may  look  as  the 
real  source  of  all  moral  law.  It  is  a  "  transcript  of 
the  Divine  nature"  in  a  profounder  sense  than  the 
popular  use  of  that  language  implies.  It  is  with  the 
utmost  fulness  of  meaning  the  "  law  of  God."  He 
has  not  made  it  for  certain  ends,  but  has  simply 
revealed  it.  The  Almighty  made  no  moral  laws,  but 
created  man  in  his  own  image.  The  moral  laws  of 
the  Divine  nature  were  incorporated  in  the  nature  of 
man.  To  tell  what  God  and  man  are,  and  what  are 
their  mutual  relations,  is  to  tell  whence  moral  law 
came.  And  just  so  long  as  God  and  man  shall  con- 
tinue to  be,  just  so  long  this  law  will  remain  as 
unchangeable  as  the  eternal  throne. 

When  Jesus  proclaimed  himself  the  Light  of  the 
world  he  illumined  only  the  horizon  of  the  distant 
^  East.  To-day  he  irradiates  the  central  and  control- 
ling nations  of  the  globe.  And  physical  science, 
which,  it  has  been  prophesied,  will  extinguish  his 
light,  is  now  adding  to  its  transparency  and  its  vivi- 
fying warmth.  Thanks  to  science  for  its  service.  If 
moral  law  be  grounded  as  we  have  stated,  the  time 
will  yet  come  when  from  the  Sun  of  righteousness 
there  ^ill  go  forth  light,  and  warmth,  and  purity,  and 
peace,  and  abiding  joy  to  the  remotest  corner  of  the 
earth. 


MORAL   LAW.  49 

The  unwillingness  of  sceptics  to  assail  the  moral  rv 
teachings  of  Christianity  is  a  curious  but  uninten- 
tional recognition  of  the  impregnable  basis  on  which 
they  rest.  You  will  observe  that  attacks  on  the 
Christian  religion  are  directed  almost  exclusively 
against  either  its  history,  its  creeds  and  theologicaly 
systems,  or  its  ecclesiastical  organizations.  The  his- 
tory of  its  beginnings  pertains  to  the  remote ;  it  is 
easy  to  assail  it.  Creeds,  which  have  too  often  been 
mere  compromises  between  conflicting  statements,  and 
its  theological  systems,  are  mostly  the  productions  of 
philosophies  applied  to  the  facts  of  revelation  and 
of  the  moral  consciousness.  The  philosophies  have 
changed ;  the  creeds  and  theological  systems  have 
been  discredited,  and  so  have  become  assailable.  In 
like  manner  ecclesiastical  organizations,  which  are 
essential  to  the  conservation  of  the  Christian  life, 
have  been  either  the  product  of  circumstances  or  the 
contrivances  of  men.  Organization  began  to  exist 
only  as  the  wants  of  the  new  life  made  necessary. 
When  anything  was  to  be  done,  some  one  was  ap- 
pointed to  do  it.  To  do  an  "  office  "  for  the  Church 
speedily  prepared  the  way  for  regarding  office  as  a 
place  into  which  some  one  must  be  put  as  an  officer. 
Ecclesiasticism  has  been  a  natural  growth;  it  has 
been  open  to  attack  on  many  sides,  and  the  enemies 
of  Christianity  have  not  been  slow  to  improve  their 
opportunities.  But  moral  law,  which  it  is  the  one 
great  office  of  Christianity  to  explain,  to  enforce,  and 
to  help  mankind  to  fulfil,  the  enemies  of  ChristianityX 
are  not  eager  to  attack. 


50  CHRIST  AND   MODERN  THOUGHT. 

MORAL  LAW  AND   POPULAR  RELIGION. 

Let  US  turn  now  to  the  other  side  of  our  subject,  — 
the  relation  of  moral  law  to  popular  religion.  What 
is  this  relation  ?  We  could  easily  answer  in  the  words 
of  Jesus  :  "  Think  not  that  I  am  come  to  destroy  the 
law,  or  the  prophets ;  I  am  not  come  to  destroy,  but 
to  fulfil.  For  verily  I  say  unto  you,  Till  heaven  and 
earth  pass,  one  jot  or  one  tittle  shall  in  no  wise  pass 
from  the  law,  till  all  be  fulfilled."  The  true  meaning 
of  the  law  had  been  concealed  by  false  glosses.  The 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  was  distinctively  and  wellnigh 

Y;  exclusively  an  exposition  of  the  law.     The  exposition 

'  made  it  seem  like  a  new  revelation ;  like  an  over- 
throw of  the  old  to  make  room  for  the  new.  The 
assurance  was  necessary,  therefore,  that  the  purpose 
of  Christianity  was  not  the  abrogation,  but  the  strict- 
est fulfilment  of  all  moral  law.  That  assurance  is 
reiterated  on  every  page  of  the  four  Gospels.  Any 
conception,  then,  of  Christianity  which  supposes  it 
to  be  a  scheme  to  evade  law,  to  escape  its  penalties, 

vi  or  to  avoid  the  fulfilment  of  it,  is  an  unwarrantabl3^ 
narrow  conception,  and  just  so  far  as  it  is  narrow, 
is  false. 

No  error  has  crept  into  Christian  teaching  more 
radically  mischievous  than  that  which  affirms  all  law 

■/^  to  have  been  abolished  by  Jesus  Christ.  Out  of  it 
have  come  some  of  the  darkest  blots  that  have  rested 
on  the  Christian  name.  The  origin  of  the  error  is 
easily  traced.  In  Judaism,  out  of  which  Christianity 
sprang,  every  conceivable  relation  in  life  was  covered 


MORAL  LAW.  51 

by  a  statute.     A  complete  network  of  legal  require-  A 
ments  enveloped  the  whole  man  every  moment  of  his 
being.     The  state  was  a  theoci-acy ;  the  religion  was 
a  ritual ;  and  the  whole  social  and  domestic  life  of 
the  people  was  regulated  by  a  system  of  ceremonials 
that  descended  to  minutest  particulars.     The  civil, 
the  ritual,  and  the  ceremonial  being  each  and  all  sub- 
servient to  the   moral,    each  and  all  were  included 
under  the  one  generic  term,  the  Law.    Upon  his  com- 
pliance with  the  Law  depended,  without  appeal,  the 
whole  fate  of  the  Jew.     But  the  civil  law  was  over-     y 
ridden  by  the  conquering  Eoman ;    the  ceremonial 
and  ritual  were  abolished  by  Christianity.     To  sup-    ^  " 
pose  moral  law,  however,  to  have  been  abolished,  is 
to  suppose  man  to  have  been  transformed  into  some-    ' 
thing  else  than  man  ;  is  to  suppose  the  nature  of  God 
to  have  been  changed,  and  the  moral  order  of  the 
universe  to  have  been  subverted. 

EEWAKDS  AND   PENALTIES. 

If  the  explanation  we  have  given  of  the  origin  of 
moral  law  be  correct,  we  may  see  the  mistake  of 
ascribing  all  moral  sanctions  to  direct  Divine  agency. 
Rewards  and  penalties  are  certainly  not  arbitrarily 
distributed.  The  results  of  physical  law  are  not  more 
immediate,  natural,  and  inevitable  than  are  those  of 
moral  law.  Rewards  come  by  natural  reaction  from 
obedience  to  law.  Glow  of  cheek,  sparkle  of  eye,  and 
flow  of  spirits  are  not  more  naturall}^  and  immedi- 
ately the  product  of  locomotion  and  respiration  amid 
the  crisp  air  of  a  Xew  England  winter  day  than  are 


52        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

the  glow  of  soul  and  peace  and  joy  of  heart  which 
flow  from  vigilant  obedience  to  moral  law  amid  the 
stir  and  strife  of  the  world. 

So  of  moral  penalties.  These  are  natural  reactions 
from  disobedience  to  moral  law.  Bodily  disease  and 
death  do  not  more  immediately  and  necessarily  follow 
the  violation  of  physical  laws  than  do  mental  diseases 
and  moral  death  the  violation  of  moral  obligations. 
The  penal  sanctions  of  one  set  of  laws  are  just  as 
natural  and  invariable  as  are  those  of  another.  Vice 
J  in  the  vicious  man  leers  out  of  his  eye,  sensualizes  his 
'  lip,  riots  in  his  blood,  fouls  his  imagination,  corrupts 
his  whole  being.  And  then  those  subtler  sins  with 
which  it  is  so  difficult  to  deal,  —  envy,  jealousy,  pride, 
covetousness,  those  vices  of  the  soul,  —  do  they  not 
write  their  penalties  on  the  moral  nature  of  man  ? 
Do  they  not  blunt  the  moral  sensibilities  ?  Do  they 
not,  by  their  natural  sequences,  corrupt  through  and 
through  every  fibre  of  the  soul  ? 

Nor  will  it  here  suffice  for  any  one  to  interpose  the 
objection  that  he  recognizes  a  supreme  will  in  nature  ; 
that  he  regards  the  so-called  forces  of  nature  as  "  God 
acting,"  and  physical  laws  as  rules  according  to  which 
he  'has  chosen  to  act;  and  that  he  believes  the 
rewards  and  penalties  of  moral  law  are  directly  dis- 
tributed by  the  hand  of  a  Supreme  Being ;  let  us  look 
at  this  for  a  moment.  Does  the  universal  confidence 
which  is  always  reposed  in  a  man  of  well-tried  integ- 
H"  rity  result  as  a  natural  sequence  of  his  integrity,  or  is 
it  a  supernatural  bestowal  ?  Is  the  public  distrust 
of  the  liar  and  the  forger  by  natural  sequence,  or  by 


MORAL   LAW.  53 

Divine  interposition  ?  Does  virtue  naturally  refine 
tlie  soul,  or  is  refinement  bestowed  from  without  ? 
And  are  the  rewards  and  penalties  any  less  the 
expressions  of  the  Divine  will,  because  coming  natu- 
rally by  law,  than  they  would  be  if  proved  to  come 
directly  by  Divine  interposition  ? 

And  here  we  see  how  gratuitous  is  the  noisy  indig- 
nation of  those  sentimental  souls  who  wax  so  elo- 
quent in  their  denunciations  of  the  idea  of  a  Divine 
punishment  of  evil-doers,  especially  of  the  idea  that 
punishment  should  run  into  another  life ;  and,  most 
horrible  of  all,  should  for  a  moment  be  thought  of  as 
possibly  unending.  Has  it  never  occurred  to  these 
tender-hearted  people  to  rail  against  Nature  for  her 
cruelty  in  leaving  the  man  with  crushed  limbs  to 
writhe  in  pain,  and,  if  he  survive  his  first  agony,  to 
linger  through  a  long  life  of  suffering  and  helpless- 
ness ?  Has  it  never  occurred  to  them  that  possibly 
the  pangs  of  remorse  are  just  as  natural  and  endur- 
ing as  the  anguish  of  lacerated  or  disordered  nerves  ? 
And  why  distinguish  between  penalties  in  the  body 
and  penalties  in  the  soul  ?  On  their  own  theory,  is 
Nature  less  cunning  in  repairing  the  material  organ- 
ism than  in  healing  the  wounds  of  the  soul  ?  Should 
the  soul  survive  the  body,  why  may  not  the  vitiated  \/ 
tastes,  the  wounds,  the  dwarfed  powers,  the  crippled 
energies,  whicli  have  come  to  it  in  life,  continue  so  long 
as  it  endures,  just  as  pain  and  deformity  and  enfeeble- 
ment  of  body  continue  with  it  so  long  as  it  lasts  ? 

There  was  a  time  within  the  memory  of  living  men 
when  Boston  resounded  with  the  doctrine  that  every 


v; 


54        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

man  at  the  last  would  be  judged  and  awarded  to  his 
final  destiny  in  strict  accordance  with  his  obedience 
or  disobedience  to  moral  law.  That  doctrine  was  a 
great  truth,  however  severed  from  others  that  qualified 
it ;  and  it  has  left  its  marks  on  the  Boston  character. 
The  descendants  of  the  prophets  of  that  great  truth, 
building  their  sepulchres,  too  often  inscribe  on  them : 
"  God  is  too  merciful  to  punish  the  wayward  and  the 
weak." 

REMISSION   OF   PENALTY. 

To  rescue  man  from  the  doom  of  moral  penalty  is 

^       one  of  the  first  and  most  distinctively  announced 

^      purposes   of  the   Christian   religion.      And   what  it 

announced  as  its  purpose,  it  proposes  to  accomplish 

not  in  mere  form  but  in  reality ;  not  only  accounting 

a  man  to  be  righteous,  but  making  him  so ;  imparting 

to  him  what  it  imputes  to  him ;  not  so  much  throw- 

cj^  ing  around  him  a  cloak  of  righteousness  as  putting 

within  him  a  righteous  spirit.     But  the  method  by 

which  it  thus  accomplishes  its  purpose  of  releasing 

from  moral  penalty  is  one  of  the  disputed  questions 

in  popular  theology.     Yet  it  is  a  question  to  which 

every  one  who  would  teach  Christianity  to  the  people 

must  give  to  himself  some  kind  of  an  answer.     He 

may  answer  it  doctrinally,  and  if  his  doctrine  is  to 

have  any  meaning  and  power   with   him   he  nmst 

answer  it  to  himself  as  a  question  of  practical  reli- 

.  gious  pliilosophy.     We  shall  here  content  ourselves 

with  the  briefest  possible  glance  at  the  latter  side  of 

the  question. 

Penalty  may  be  contemplated  under  three  aspects  : 


MORAL   LAW.  65 

as  the  natural  sequence  of  wrong-doing  which  stamps 
itself  on  the  soul  and  penetrates  into  the  inner  being ; 
as  the  inflictions  of  an  accusing  conscience,  the  self- 
judgment  which  every  one  pronounces  on  himself  in 
view  of  neglected  duties  or  of  forbidden  deeds ;  as 
punitive  judgments  immediately  inflicted  or  held  in 
reserve  by  the  Supreme  Ruler  of  all.  But  these  are 
only  different  aspects  of  one  and  the  same  thing. 
The  judgments  of  God  can  become  effective  as  moral 
penalties  only  as  they  reach  the  soul  through  the  con-  y 
science ;  and  the  upbraidings  of  conscience  become 
penal  only  as  they  accord  with  the  judgments  of  God 
and  with  the  natural  results  of  moral  evil  in  the 
soul.  The  penalty,  therefore,  which  tlie  Gospel  is  to 
remove  is  in  the  soul  of  man.  And  it  is  a  penalty 
which  reduplicates  its  own  cause.  The  sorest  punish- 
ment of  moi-al  evil  is  an  ever-increasing  disposition  >^ 
to  continue  in  it.  There  may  be  great  and  just  judg- 
ments for  wrong-doing  which  hang  suspended  in  the 
hands  of  Omnipotence,  and  which  in  due  time  fall 
like  thunderbolts  on  the  iniquitous.  But  the  sin  and 
its  penalty,  from  which  the  Gospel  proposes  to  save 
man,  are  found  in  man  himself  They  are  said  to  be 
written  in  a  book ;  the  imagery  is  admirable,  but  the 
real  book  is  the  human  soul.  It  is  from  it  that  the 
penalty  must  be  removed.  But  what  is  the  metliod 
of  its  removal  ?  Certainly  not  by  fiat.  God  is  always 
and  everywhere  consistent  with  himself  He  will  not 
violate  one  of  his  moral  laws  to  save  even  a  human 
soul.  And  we  may  be  assured  there  will  be  no  act  in 
the  process  of  saving  him  which  will  be  arbitrary. 


66        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

The  one  great  fact  of  Christianity  is,  that  a  Being 
of  infinite  resources  has  appeared  on  the  earth  and 
'announced  himself  as  a  Deliverer  of  man.  His  inter- 
position in  our  behalf  was  the  turning-point  in  the 
history  of  our  race.     And  the  one  principle  which 

/makes  available  and  effectual  all  that  he  w^rought  for 

;  us  in  his  life  and  by  his  death,  and  all  that  he  is  for 
us  in  himself,  is  the  principle  of  faith.      And  the 

^  object  of  our  trust  is  not  alone  what  he  said  or  what 
X  -he  did  or  what  he  suffered,  but  also  what  he  himself 

.  was  and  ever  is.  The  source  of  our  strength  in  the 
struggle  for  release,  the  ground  of  our  hope  for  final 
deliverance,  is  not  scr  much  in  a  something  which 
has  been  done  for  us  as  it  is  in  the  infinite  Being 
who  has  done  it.  Our  victory  is  alone  through 
trust  in  Him  who  had  no  penalty  of  his  own  to  bear, 
and  has  proved  himself  able  to  bear   those  of  all 

i    others. 

'  The  one  principle  which  exists  among  all  peoples, 
and  at  the  same  time  is  the  most  efficient  in  the  con- 
X  struction  of  human  character,  is  faith.  Neither  social 
nor  individual  life  is  possible  without  some  degree  of 
it.  The  more  completely  the  members  of  society  are 
swayed  by  it,  the  more  nearly  perfect  will  be  the  social 
and  the  individual  life.    This  principle  Christianity 

I  adopts  as  its  most  efficient  agency  in  working  out  its 
intent  in  man.  And  nothing  could  make  more  evi- 
dent the  effectiveness  of  faith  in  working  out  the 
purpose  of  Christianity  than  the  certainty  wdth  which 

'  every  one  becomes  like  the  object  of  his  trust.  These 
are  the  invariable  and  inevitable  sequences  of  the  law 


MORAL  LAW.  67 

of  faith.  If  the  object  of  one's  trust  be  personal  and 
superior,  it  is  impossible  that  his  defects  of  character 
should  remain  uncorrected ;  if  perfect,  the  correction 
may  be  continuous  and  endless.  So  in  eradicating 
moral  evil  and  in  erasing  its  penalties  from  the  soul ; 
in  the  beneficent  results  of  faith  the  penal  sanctions 
of  previous  disobedience  are  overborne  and  carried 
away.  Even  the  old  spirit  of  disobedience  is  absorbed 
in  the  desire  to  be  in  harmony  with  the  new  object 
of  trust.  The  beneficent  working  of  the  new  law 
obeyed  more  than  counteracts,  it  takes  away,  the 
penal  results  of  the  old  laws  violated.  But  the  moral 
scars  will  remain  with  us,  and  humble  us,  and  they 
never  will  exalt  us.  No  doctrine  was  ever  more  per- 
nicious than  that  which  teaches  that  the  greater  the 
sinner  the  greater  the  saint. 

THE  TRUE  AIM   OF  RELIGION. 

What  now  in  conclusion  and  in  review  of  this  dis- 
cussion should  be  rej^arded  as  the  one  great  aim  of  all 
true  religion  ?  Should  it  be  anything  else  than  to 
help  every  one  to  rise  as  near  as  possible  towards  a 
realization  of  the  highest  ideal  of  life  ?  Can  that 
man  be  said  to  be  saved  who  has  not  already  put 
himself  upon  a  course  of  training  in  which  the  ruling 
purpose  of  his  life  shall  be  the  fulfilment  of  every 
law  of  his  being  ?  The  greatest  defect  and  gravest 
peril  of  the  popular  religion  of  our  day  is  its  dispo- 
sition to  rest  in  mere  negations  as  regards  personal 
conduct  and  character,  and  in  mere  contributions  of 
money  as  regards  public  activities.     But  to  save  a 


?^ 


68        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

man  in  the  true  Christian  sense  of  salvation  is  to 
round  him  out  into  the  completest  fulness  of  being 
/  of  which  he  is  capable,  —  is  to  make  him  pure   in 
^  heart,  exalted  in  purpose,  unimpeachable  in  his  integ- 
L  rity,  keenly  sensitive  to  every  moral  obligation,  and 
u  supremely  loyal  to  the  will  of  God,  whether  expressed 
^  in  command  or  in  promise. 
'  "-^    Man  is  a  compound  being.    He  is  both  animal  and 
angel,  —  the  tangential  point  between  the  two  worlds 
of  matter  and  of  spirit.    Every  power  and  capacity  of 
his  being  has  its  root  and  its  ground  in  this  twofold 
nature.     And  he  is  capable  of  three  planes  of  life,  — 
•^  the  animal,  the  intellectual,  the  moral  and  religious. 
But  the  three  are  indivisibly  connected.     As  you  can 
have  no  soil  without  rock,  and  no  plant  without  soil, 
and  no  animal  without  plant,  and  no  man  without 
both  plant  and  animal,  so  you  can  have  no  intellect 
without  body,  and  no  morality  without  intellect,  and 
no  real  religion  without  both  intellect  and  morality. 
Every  law  of  his  personal  being  to  which  man  is  sub- 
ject is  more  or  less  immediately  the  expression  of  the 
possibilities  of  his  twofold  nature ;  and  every  moral 
law  is  a  revelation  of  the  capacities,  the  needs,  and 
the  deeper  aspirations  of  his  complex  being.     No  one 
of  these  laws  can  receive  attention  to  the  neglect  of 
others,  that  the  neglected  ones  will  not  avenge  their 
neglect.     Merely  seeking  to  save  man  from  sinking 
'      into   the   animal   will   not  insure  his  becoming^  an 
angel ;  nor  in  alone  aiming  to  make  of  him  an  angel 
shall  we  save  him  from  sinking  into  the  animal.     A 
true  religion,  which  is  to  perform  all  its  offices  for 


MORAL   LAW.  59 

man,  must  take  account  of,  and  provide  for,  the  whole 
of  his  indivisible  nature ;  and  for  the  whole,  because 
the  whole  is  subservient  to  the  moral.  The  one  com- 
prehensive and  all-inclusive  aim  of  a  true  religion  is, 
and  ever  must  be,  to  secure  in  man  the  unqualified 
and  unfailing  fulfilment  of  the  moral  laws  of  his 
being,  which  are  as  eternal  as  the  soul  and  as  immu- 
table as  the  throne  of  the  Almighty. 


III. 

CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    MENTAL 
ACTIVITY    OF    THE    AGE. 

By  rev.   THOMAS  GUAED. 


'J^^ 


/JUaa^ 


III. 


CHEISTIANITY    AND    THE    MENTAL 
ACTIVITY  OF  THE  AGE. 

By  rev.  THOMAS  GUARD. 

A  GLANCE  over  the  vacant  vastness  of  this  audi- 
ence-chamber suffices  to  remind  me  of  the  ab- 
sence, beyond  the  water,  of  the  gifted  founder  of  your 
"  Monday  Lectureship."  May  he  be  preserved  from 
all  perils  while  he  travels,  and  return  from  his  wan- 
derings, laurelled  with  fresh  honors,  to  the  scene  of 
his  frequent  triumphs  ! 

I  am  not  here,  I  assure  you,  to  attempt  the  task 
for  which  he  proved  himself  so  signally  equipped. 
"Who  but  himself  could  wield  Ulysses's  bow  ?  Never- 
theless, the  task  assigned  me  is  no  light  one.  I  have 
asked  myself,  once  and  again,  Wliy  was  I  not  requested 
to  compress  the  globe  into  an  ultimate  atom,  ensphere 
the-  sun  in  a  dew-drop,  or  find  for  the  most  ancient 
ocean  a  home  within  the  compass  of  a  scallop-shell? 
For  I  am  expected  to  discuss  the  relations  of  Chris- 
tianity to  the  mental  activities  of  our  age,  within 
the  limits  of  an  hour  !  It  is  impossible  !  I  shrink . 
from  it.  I  cannot  exhaust  such  a  theme.  I  may  be 
permitted  to  hope,  however,  that  I  shall  prove  sug- 
gestive. 


64        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

Made  in  the  image  of  the  ever-living  One,  the 
human  mind  "  faints  not,  neither  is  weary,"  by  reason 
of  activity ;  and  to  think,  is  to  act.  Our  age  is  peer- 
less in  the  quantity  of  intellectual  activity,  whatever 
may  be  said  of  the  quality  of  that  activity,  or  of  its 
issues.  Never  so  much  free  thought,  never  so  much 
freedom  of  thought,  as  to-day.  The  schoolmaster 
is  abroad.  The  press  is  in  untiring  operation.  The 
spirit  of  inquiry  is  ubiquitous.  History  pores  over 
coins,  cipher  correspondence,  antique  customs,  hoary 
constitutions,  dry-as-dust  scrolls,  acts  of  parliament, 
alabaster  slabs,  street  ballads,  fugitive  tracts,  diaries 
of  lettered  princesses  and  journals  of  court  favorites  ; 
from  such  incongruous  material  extracting  the  sub- 
stance wherewith  to  fashion  those  imperishable  piles 
of  wisdom  with  which  our  grateful  and  instructed 
hearts  associate  the  names  of  Grote,  Mommsen, 
Merivale,  Prescott,  Motley,  Macaulay,  Bancroft,  and 
Carlyle. 

Travellers  haste  o'er  land  and  ocean  without  rest : 
now  plunging  into  the  wonders  of  Central  Africa, 
now  looking  down  upon  the  cradle  of  the  Mle,  now 
tracking  the  footsteps  of  the  pre-Adamite  progenitors 
of  our  race;  to-day  resting  beneath  the  columns  of 
Luxor,  or  two  weeks  hence  within  the  shadows  of  the 
ruined  temples,  tombs,  and  theatres  of  Petra ;  then 
treading  the  sacred  soil  and  climbing  the  sacred  slopes 
on  which  redemption's  truths  were  uttered  and  re- 
demption's price  was  paid ;  then  off  and  away  to 
the  land  where  every  dell  enshrined  a  deity,  every 
fountain  leaped  to  song,  —  whose  breezes  floated  the 


CHRISTIANITY  AND   MENTAL  ACTIVITY.  65 

melodies  of  Plato,  or  trembled  to  the  thunder  of 
Demosthenes. 

Scientists  are  heaving  the  lead  in  deep-sea  sound- 
ings ;  foretelling  the  birth  of  the  tornado ;  weighing  the 
earth  in  scales;  interpreting  the  hieroglyphs  carved 
on  mountain  summit  and  on  sandstone  stratum  ;  pur- 
suing the  comet  o'er  the  plains  of  ether;  analyzing  the 
elements  of  the  light-wave  propelled  by  Sirius  across 
the  amplitudes  of  space  ;  solving  the  mysteries  that 
lurk  in  frond  and  cell,  in  tinted  sea-shells  and  in 
coral  bowers  ;  reckoning  up  the  ages  of  the  sun ;  de- 
fining the  orbit  of  Neptune  or  ever  its  mass  had 
crossed  the  disk  of  aided  or  unaided  eye ;  in  every 
motion  finding  an  idea,  in  every  form  a  purpose,  and 
in  every  event  the  token  of  a  plan  and  system ; 
changing  chaos  and  confusion  into  order  and  cosmos ; 
and,  in  the  unity  impressed  upon  and  interwoven 
through  the  vast  and  varied  whole,  beholding  the 
reflected  Unity  of  him  "  hy  wlwm  are  all  things, 
and  for  whom  are  all  things,  —  God  over  all,  Messed 
forever" 

And  the  results  of  such  activities  are  within  the 
reach  of  every  one  desirous  of  copious  and  accurate 
information.  With  the  sage  most  profound,  with  the 
scholar  most  erudite,  with  the  scientist  most  accom- 
plished, with  the  poet  most  subtle-minded,  with  the 
products  of  pen  and  pencil,  of  microscope  and  tele- 
scope, of  scalpel  and  prism,  the  youth  of  eager 
longing  and  quenchless  thirst  for  truth  may  hold 
communion,  by  reason  of  the  prodigious  triumphs  of 
the  printing-press. 


66        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

What  has  Christianity  to  say  to  all  this  intellectual 
movement  ?  What  emotions  heave  her  bosom  ?  Is 
it  with  sentiments  of  envy,  jealousy,  and  fear,  or  of 
favoring  sympathy  that  she  gazes  on  the  scene  of 
seething,  surging,  struggling  spirit-life  ? 

The  study  of  her  inspired  records  and  of  her  historic 
chapters  affords  an  answer ;  and  in  that  answer  we 
read  amplest  assurance  of  ter  friendship  and  aid. 

1.  To  the  understanding  of  man  she  ever  appealed. 
"  By  manifestation  of  the  truth "  she  proposes  to  con- 
quer. With  a  sublime  audacity  she  ignores  physical 
force  as  an  instrument  of  victory.  "  Ye  shall  know 
the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free,"  were 
the  clarion  tones  w^hich  fell  upon  the  ears  of  the  in- 
thralled  victims  of  ignorance,  superstition,  priestcraft. 
Above  her  hosts,  as  they  marched  to  further  triumphs, 
her  banner  floated,  and  on  its  folds  men  read  the 
strange  device,  "  Prove  all  things,  hold  fast  that  which 
is  good."  Whenever  permitted,  she  grappled  with  the 
Jew,  and  "  reasoned  out  of  his  Scripture ; "  with  the 
Greek,  and  argued  out  of  his  sacred  writings  of  nature, 
conscience,  history.  Upon  her  converts  she  urged  the 
noble  duty,  "  Be  always  ready  to  give  a  reason  of  the 
hope  that  is  in  you."  The  divine  Founder  of  our  faith 
gave  no  uncertain  sound  when  he  said, "  For  this  cause 
came  I  into  the  world,  that  I  should  bear  witness  unto 
the  Tj:uth.  Every  one  that  is  of  the  Truth  heareth  my 
voice."  To  Christianity  there  is  nothing  ignoble  and 
V  nothing  insignificant  in  aught  that  touches  or  apper- 
tains to  n^au.  In  her  estimate  he  is  of  more  value  than 
many  ^par?:ows.     His  retur4  to  moral  canity,  we  are 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  MENTAL  ACTIVITY.  67 

assured,  moves  the  mnks  of  serapliim  with  strange 
joy.  For  his  eternal  weal  the  counsels  of  the  Infinite 
planned,  when  as  yet  nor  light-ray  travelled,  nor  force 
electric  thrilled,  nor  mountain  soared,  nor  ocean  tossed, 
nor  tempest  marched,  nor  forest  waved,  nor  landscape 
spread,  all  dewy  and  all  fragrant,  beneath  the  cloud- 
less sun.  To  nothing  human  can  Christianity  be  in- 
different. Body,  soul,  and  spirit  have  been  redeemed 
and  provided  for  by  this  divine  system.  As  the  Sab- 
bath, so  Christianity,  "is  made  for  man;"  and  such 
is  man's  relation  thereto,  that  we  may  say,  as  of  the 
sun  in  relation  to  our  planet,  "  There  is  nothing  hid 
from  the  heat  thereof"  To  all  that  is  profoundest  in 
man  the  influence  pierces  ;  over  all  that  is  amplest  in 
man  the  influence  diffuses  ;  and  on  all  that  is  loftiest 
in  man  her  inspiration  breathes  a  benediction.  Nor 
this  alone :  there  are  depths  of  our  nature  reached  but 
by  Christianity ;  chords  of  our  hearts  that  refuse  their 
harmonies  to  any  touch  but  hers ;  and  magnanimi- 
ties, heroisms,  martyrdoms,  in  life  and  in  death,  de- 
veloped but  by  her  plenipotence  of  holy  love  and 
blessed  hope. 

2.  Christianity  provokes  thought.  That  the  power 
of  our  holy  faith  may  be  experienced  to  the  utter- 
most, faith  is  essential.  Faith  demands  reason  for  its 
exercise.  And  to  meet  this  demand  of  our  nature 
Christianity  presents  credentials.  Belief  is  impossible, 
unless  sufficient  reason  for  belief  be  furnished.  Here, 
then,  the  scope  for  intellectual  action  appears.  'What 
are  the  credentials  accompanying  Christianity  ?  Are 
they  such  in  quality  and  in  number  as  to  warrant 


68        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

our  faith  ?  The  replies  to  those  queries  are  given  in 
the  suniless  writings  called  "  The  Evidences  of  Chris- 
tianity." Certainly  these  are  products  of  thought, 
scholarship,  logic,  philosophic  investigation  and  dis- 
cussion. Certainly  these  demonstrate  the  thought- 
compelling  might  of  the  Christian  faith. 

To  a  man  possessed  of  an  honest  heart  and  quick- 
ened conscience,  a  system  of  truth  attd  of  religion 
professing  to  come  from  the  Supreme  One,  with  whom 
we  have  to  do,  cannot  be  treated  with  the  slightest  ap- 
proach towards  indifference.  It  may  he  true.  If  so, 
there  is  a  duty  corresponding  to  the  bare  probability 
of  truthfulness, — that  duty,  attention,  audience,  inves- 
tigation. At  once  the  mind  assumes  an  attitude  of 
earnest  wakefuhiess.  The  substance  of  the  message 
shall  be  weighed,  compared,  judged.  The  evidences 
attendant  upon  the  message  and  messenger  shall 
win  sober,  courteous,  brave,  and  honest  investiga- 
tion. And  so,  and  only  so,  shall  the  conscience  of 
the  man  approve  of  his  conduct.  But  in  all  this 
see  we  not  the  tremendous  stimulus  imparted  to  the 
intellectual  as  well  as  the  moral  forces  of  the  soul  ? 
Name  a  mental  faculty  not  called  into  play  by  such 
a  professedly  divine  communication.  Memory,  com- 
parison, judgment,  imagination,  reason,  all  mental 
instincts,  intuitions,  affinities,  and  proclivities,  are 
in  succession,  or  combinedly,  in  utmost  vigor  of  ac- 
tion. A  crisis  in  the  intellectual  life  has  arisen.  The 
man  dates  a  new  birth,  as  a  thinker,  from  the  advent- 
hour  of  such  a  system  as  our  faith.  Whether  Chris- 
tianity made  him  a  saint,  or  by  reason  of  his  perverse 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  MENTAL  ACTIVITY.  69 

will  failed  in  that  great  work,  she  made  him  a 
thinker.  He  became  a  foe  of  that  which  extorted 
from  him  the  exclamation,  "Hast  thou  found  me, 
0  mine  enemy  ? "  And  because  a  foe,  a  thinker,  — 
irritated  into  thinking  through  Juitred  of  Christianity, 
Therefore,  compose  the  treatise  and  the  essay  to  prove 
it  a  myth ;  visit  Orient  lands  to  demonstrate  it  an 
imposture ;  compile  a  comparative  theology  to  minify 
its  rank  in  the  presence  o£  other  systems  !  Therefore, 
see  but  its  difficulties  and  ignore  the  possible  expla- 
nations of  its  seeming  contradictions  with  history  or 
science  !  Yet  in  all  this,  what  see  we  but  immense 
intellectual  outgoing  and  energy,  scholarship,  science, 
philosophic  subtlety  and  lore,  aesthetic  culture,  literary 
creativeness  ?  And  inasmuch  as  for  this  intellectual 
action  Christianity  is  responsible,  both  as  cause  and 
occasion,  do  we  behold  evidence  of  her  power  to  arouse 
and  develop  thought. 

3.  There  is  antagonism  to  Christianity  in  much  of 
the  intellectual  life  of  our  age.  This  does  not  surprise 
us.  It  was  to  have  been  anticipated.  No  student  of 
the  mission  of  Christianity,  at  all  familiar  with  the 
moral  condition  of  our  race,  should  feel  "  as  though 
some  strange  thing  happened,"  if  Christianity  devel- 
oped hostility  most  bitter  in  the  very  ranks  of  those 
whom  it  came  to  woo  and  to  save. 

For  it  was  in  this  very  antagonism  to  its  Author 
that  the  need  for  such  a  system  obtained.  But  that 
man  was  a  sinner,  and  th^t  his  depravity  expressed 
itself  in  enmity  to  God,  Christianity  had  been  a 
superfluity  of  appliances  and  agencies.     Its  existence 


+- 


70        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

implies  strife,  and  its  career  hitherto  has  been  one  of 
aggrandizement  through  struggle.  Early  in  the  his- 
tory of  man  as  the  object  of  redeeming  mercy,  it  was 
announced,  "  I  will  put  enmity  between  Thy  seed  and 
her  seed."  Subsequent  ages  but  illustrated  the  truth 
of  the  announcement.  The  Founder  himself  gave 
utterance  to  the  same  great  verity :  "  Think  not  that  I 
am  come  to  send  peace  upon  earth  :  I  am  not  come  to 
send  peace,  but  a  sword."  The  last  prophet  of  inspi- 
ration depicts  in  symbols  the  most  sublime  and  sug- 
gestive the  process  of  the  struggle. 

And  to-day  the  battle  waxes  in  vehemence  of  pur- 
pose and  of  passion  ;  nor  is  there  prospect  of  speedy 
termination  of  the  conflict.  Possibly,  ay,  probably, 
the  future  shall  witness  scenes  of  combat,  compared 
with  which  the  fiercest  of  the  past  shall  seem  but 
gala-day  sports.  Not  with  sound  of  clarion,  or  tramp 
of  war-horse,  or  rush  of  scythed  chariot,  or  thun- 
der of  ordnance,  or  with  garments  rolled  in  blood, 
shall  the  battle  rage  or  the  fight  be  fought.  The 
weapons  shall  be  of  spiritual  and  ethereal  temper  and 
substance  ;  of  ore  drawn  from  the  mines  of  spirit  and 
forged  in  the  white  heat  of  passion  fires  ;  wielded  by 
the  Titans  of  error,  or  dexterous  and  death-dealing 
by  reason  of  arms  nerved  with  divine  strength  and 
fingers  taught  to  fight  by  none  other  than  the  great 
Captain  of  the  hosts  of  light  himself 

Nor  shall  the  struggle  close  until  all  the  foes'  re- 
sources shall  have  been  draion  upon,, applied,  tested.  Not 
until  the  last  form  and  method  of  resistance  to  good 
shall  have  had  scope  for  their  endeavors  and  time  for 


CHRISTIANITY  AND   MENTAL   ACTIVITY.  71 

their  display  of  skill  and  might,  and  shall  have  proved 
as  impotent  as  are  the  birds  of  night  to  hinder  the 
return  of  the  daybreak  and  the  noontide  splendor  of  . 
the  regal  sun, — not  until  then,  shall  discomfiture  cover 
the  emissaries  of  falsehood,  and  a  ransomed  world 
enter  into  "  quietness  and  assurance  forever."  And, 
fear  not,  ye  who  read  the  times,  and  whose  hearts 
sometimes  fail !  For  He  must  reign  until  He  hath 
put  down  all  that  exalteth  itself  against  Him.  "  And 
when  He  shall  have  put  down  all  rule  and  all  au- 
thority, then  Cometh  the  end." 

We  confess  our  delight  in  this  aspect  of  the  age. 
Nothing  is  more  to  be  deprecated  than  intellectual 
stolidity,  than  uninquiring  acceptance  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith.  This  is  a  state  not  to  be  permitted,  not 
to  be  tolerated.  Better  strife  than  stupor.  Chris- 
tianity can  never  win  her  way  but  as  she  compels 
or  constrains  men  into  moods  of  investigation.  She 
courts  this.  It  is  essential  to  her  very  existence. 
She  is  willing  to  take  all  the  risks  arising  from  the 
awakening  of  thought  and  the  scrutiny  of  thinkers. 
Doubt  may  challenge  her,  scepticism  may  assail  her.  X 
She  welcomes  the  honest  doubter ;  she  disdains  not  to 
debate  with  him  who,  fearlessly  searching  after  the 
true,  sees  not  as  yet  evidence  sufficient  to  warrant  his 
assent  and  affiance.  With  tenderest  solicitude  she 
waits  upon  and  ministers  to  such.  Priests  may 
scowl  upon  them,  and  churches  threaten  them  with 
terror;  but  not  so  Christianity.  Over  the  tortured 
toiler  after  truth  she  bends,  with  infinite  compassion 
in  her  eye  and  solace  on  her  lip ;  bares  her  ample 


72        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

bosom,  arid  invites  to  shelter  and  repose  there :  "  Come 
unto  me,  all  —  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy  laden, 
and  I  will  give  you  rest."  To  the  Master's  treatment 
of  Thomas  Christianity  points  the  bewildered,  wonder- 
ing doubters  of  all  ages,  as  to  Simon  Peter  and  his 
Lord's  treatment  of  the  recreant  Apostle  she  points 
the  penitent  though  desponding  gaze  of  all  who  un- 
der dreadful  pressure  proved  traitors  to  their  divine 
Master's  name  and  cause;  and  in  his  treatment  of 
both  proves  that  "Wisdom  is  justified  of  her  cliil- 
drenr 

4.  The  action  of  Christianity  through  the  Laws  of 
Heredity  deserves  recognition  and  appreciation.    Those 

^  laws  have  their  expounders  and  illustrators  in  Galton 
and  Eibot,  in  Herbert  Spencer,  Darwin,  and  Bain. 
Darwin's  "Descent  of  Man"  is  almost  altogether  de- 
pendent upon  the  factor  of  heredity.  It  is  no  less 
potent  in  the  philosophy  of  Spencer.  By  this  "he- 
redity" principle,  "^ike  produces  like;"  sometimes, 
indeed,  "  like  "  seems  capable  of  producing  very  "  un- 
like;"  but  it  is  only  seemingly  so.     The  new-born 

^  immortal  is  therefore  "  the  very  image  of  his  father," 
be  the  fact  flattering  to  the  parent  or  otherwise. 
Piiysical  characteristics  are  thus  transmissible.  The 
past  can  be  reproduced.  Nothing  is  lost  that  can 
serve  the  interests  of  the  organization.  Tendencies 
are  "  fixed,"  vicious  proclivities  descend,  and  disease 
becomes  a  legacy.  Should  "variety,"  by  some  in- 
scrutable law,  be  introduced,  and  should  that  variety 
tend  to  secure  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  heredity 
seizes  it,  incorporates  it,  and  secures  its  perpetuity 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  MENTAL  ACTIVITY.  73 

through  successive  generations.  The  law  of  con- 
tinuity sways  it.  To  it,  we  are  told,  species  owe 
their  origin ;  and  through  it,  we  are  assured,  man  has 
derived  his  finest  sensibilities  and  his  loftiest  senti- 
ments. From  the  dull  oyster  through  the  stupid 
donkey,  up,  still  up,  the  germ  of  the  coming  man 
has  never  failed  persistently  to  press,  until  the  all 
but  unbeginning  ])ast  culminates  in  the  creature 
whose  initial  condition  proclaims  him  a  little  higher 
than  the  missing-linked  one,  and  whose  perfedional 
condition  shall  proclaim  him  "  a  little  lower  than  the 
angels."  Well,  no  doubt  according  to  the  laws  of  he- 
redity the  Eternal  One  has  seen  fit  to  act.  The  pres- 
ence of  the  principle  was  not  discovered  yesterday. 
Jacob,  in  the  days  of  his  service  between  the  rivers, 
caught  sight  of  it  and  utilized  it.  To-day  we  have 
multiplied  proof  in  its  favor,  and  are  not  in  any 
extreme  danger  of  depreciating  its  potency  as  an 
element  in  our  civilization. 

Has  not  Christianity  availed  herself  of  this  subtile 
force  ?  Are  we  not  justified  in  attributing  to  her, 
incalculable  influence  upon  the  mental  capacity  of 
our  age,  along  the  lines  of  this  authenticated  principle 
of  our  complex  being  ?  For  eighteen  hundred  years 
has  Christianity  been  working  on,  working  with, 
working  through,  humanity.  The  physical  nature  of 
the  race  has  thus  been  improved,  and  the  moral 
has  participated  in  the  ennobling  effects;  why  not 
the  mental?  Why  not  the  mental  aptitudes,  —  why 
not  the  affinities  with,  the  capacity  for,  intellectual 
pursuits  and  attainments,  ameliorated,  strengthened, 


74        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

refined,  by  reason  of  the  action  and  interaction  of  the 
manifold  appliances  of  Christianity  ? 

The  greatest  thinkers  of  our  day  (even  when  far 
_yt  other  than  the  friends  of  our  faith)  are  her  legiti- 
'  mate  intellectual  offspring.  John  Stuart  Mill  came 
of  Scottish  Presbyterian  ancestry.  George  Eliot  de- 
scended from  Christian  parents  and  grew  up  amidst 
Christian  influences.  Christianity  flowered  in  the 
genius  of  Walter  Scott,  and  fruitens  in  the  products  of 
George  Macdonald  and  William  Black  ;  permeated  the 
being  of  Macaulay,  and  possessed  the  soul  of  Thomas 
Carlyle  ;  inspired  the  splendid  intellect  of  Sir  William 
Hamilton,  glowed  in  the  poetic  fires  of  Hugh  Miller, 
and  adorns  the  sanctified  learning  of  our  President 
McCosh.  Professor  J.  W.  Draper  is  the  son  of  an 
^  English  AVesleyan  minister,  and  probably  shared  in 
the  thorough  training  of  a  Wesleyan  college,  either 
as  a  "  Woodhouse  Grove,"  or  "  Kingswood  "  boy.  Your 
own  Channing,  —  calm,  clear,  comprehensive ;  the 
J  philosopher,  the  humanitarian ;  gentle  as  he  was 
strong,  and  steeped  both  in  "sweetness  and  light," 
—  owed  not  he  his  intellectual  manhood  to  Chris- 
tianity ?  Theodore  Parker,  the  vehement  iconoclast, 
the  intense  hater  of  injustice ;  masculine  in  thought 
as  poetic  in  sympathy  and  in  imagination;  he  who 
speaks  of  the  "Iris  that  scarfs  the  shoulder  of  the 
thunder-cloud,"  —  did  not  he  inherit  the  vigor  of  his 
mind  and  the  energy  of  his  athletic  spiritual  nature 
from  Puritan  forefathers  ?  And  so  of  that  other, 
upon  whose  head ,  the  snows  of  time  are  gathering, 
but  all  impotent   to  quench   the  fires  of  his  tran- 


CHRISTIANITY  AND   MENTAL  ACTIVITY.  75 

scendent  genius ;  the  old  man  eloquent ;  the  clair- 
voyant of  Concord ;  the  high  dreamer  whose  thoughts 
live,  move,  and  have  their  being  in  the  world  of  men 
around  you ;  wliose  weird  skill  oft  wove  for  him  webs 
of  gossamer,  and  of  these  fashioned  chariots  in  which 
to  float  away  and  away  into  realms  ethereal,  whither 
the  tempests  of  life  had  not  wing  to  follow,  —  is  not 
he  tlie  intellectual  culmination  of  generations  of  an- 
cestors in  the  Christian  faith  and  in  the  Christian  min- 
istry ?  The  roots  of  these  men's  mental  being  are  all  ^J 
in  Christian  soil,  and  thence  drew  nourishment  and 
flavor.  The  tree-like  life  of  these  thinkers  expanded 
in  atmosphere  surcharged  with  Christian  ideas.  Their 
ample  and  loaded  branches  ripened  into  tropic  fulness 
in  the  solar  floods  of  Christian  culture  and  civiliza- 
tion ;  and  I  am  not  extravagant  or  unjust  in  pointing 
to  them  as  splendid  evidences  of  the  power  of  our  faith  y, 
as  the  generator  of  intellectual  life  and  activity. 

Science  tells  me  that  all  terrestrial  licjht  is  from 
the  sun,  and  that,  though  absent,  the  sun  is  still  our 
light  by  night,  be  that  night  brief  as  midsummer's  or 
prolonged  as  the  six  months'  gloom  of  Arctic  zones, 
—  light  of  pine  torch  and  of  fire-fly,  light  of  waxen 
taper  and  of  oil  and  gas  lamp,  light  upon  ocean's 
phosphorescent  wave,  and  light  of  moonbeams  braid- 
ing Niagara's  brow  with  iridescent  wreath.  Directly  -^^ 
and  indirectly,  the  sun  is  the  light  of  the  world.  And  ' 
I  dare  assert  the  same  of  Christianity  and  the  in- 
tellectual world  of  our  age.  I  have  tested  this  in 
imagination  by  conceiving  the  annihilation  of  that 
Book,  so  indissolubly,  so  essentially  associated  with 


76         CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGKT. 

Christianity.  The  Bible  triumphs  when  and  where 
Christianity  triumphs.  Let  me  be  permitted  to  sup- 
pose somewhat,  at  least,  of  an  aj^proach  towards  the 
utter  destruction  of  the  Book.  First,  copies  of  the 
volume  itself,  in  all  shapes  and  sizes,  in  all  tongues 
and  versions,  shall  have  been  collected,  heaped  into 
pyramidal  piles,  and  fired,  until  but  dust  and  ashes 
remain.  No  Bible  anywhere  !  This  is  but  a  very 
y:^  little  thing,  however,  compared  with  that  to  be  ac- 
complished. Then  all  literature  —  prose,  poetic,  tome 
and  folio,  essay  and  sermon,  drama  and  lyric,  hymn 
and  idyl  —  must  be  subjected  to  a  process,  either  of 
utter  destruction  or  of  perfect,  absolutely  perfect,  ex- 
purgation, so  that  no  grace  of  style,  nor  elegance  of 
allusion,  nor  aptness  of  quotation,  nor  felicity  of  meta- 
phor, suggestive  of  or  derived  from  the  Book,  shall 
remain  in  such  volumes.  Then  visit  the  galleries, 
private  and  public,  devoted  to  the  exhibition  of  art. 
Here  are  walls  frescoed  with  the  products  of  old  mas- 
ters and  new ;  here  are  pedestals  and  niches  crowned 
and  crowded  with  the  triumphs  of  the  chisel  and  the 
sculptor.  Blot  from  that  canvas  the  Last  Supper, 
the  Transfiguration,  the  Ascension,  the  Light  of  the 
World  ;  pluck  from  that  pedestal  and  from  yonder 
niches  the  Moses  and  the  David  of  Angelo,  or  such 
forms  and  expressions  of  majesty,  tenderness,  purity, 
and  grace  as  their  creators  learned  and  caught  from 
study  of  the  teachings,  or  fellowship  with  the  heroes 
of  the  Book.  Then  haste  to  the  baptismal  registries  of 
the  Church,  and,  instead  of  Mary,  write  Cleopatra ; 
of  Eachel,  Messalina ;  of  John,  Nero ;  and  of  Peter, 


CHRISTIANITY  AND   MENTAL  ACTIVITY.  77 

Caligula.  Erase  whatever  there  reminds  one  of  the 
Bible.  Then  on  to  the  Libraries  of  law,  and  let  all 
codes,  statutes,  enactments,  constitutions,  in  which 
shall  he  found  reverence  for  God,  respect  for  liberty, 
protection  for  reputation,  life,  and  person,  defence  of 
woman  and  of  feebleness,  and  guarantee  of  equal  and 
impartial  justice  for  meanest  plebeian,  as  for  meanest 
plutocrat ;  —  let  all  such  as  owe  their  humanity,  their 
justice,  their  impartiality,  to  the  genius  and  the 
teachings  of  the  Book,  vanish  and  be  forgotten. 
Then,  away  to  the  Cemeteries,  urban  and  suburban, 
civic  and  rustic ;  to  the  crypts  and  vaults  ;  \o  the 
stately  rninster  and  to  the  humble  chapel;  —  where 
sleep  the  dead,  and  on  whose  tombs  Hope,  Faith,  and 
Love  have  carved  the  blessed  texts  in  which  the 
widow  found  a  balm  and  the  despairing,  consolation. 
See,  see  !  'T  is  a  November  midnight.  Nor  star 
nor  moon  rides  the  cloud-draped  heavens.  No  light, 
save  the  fitful  flash  from  yonder  moving  form.  That 
is  one  of  the  myriad  conspirators  against  the  human 
race,  who,  on  this  grim  night  simultaneously  visit 
the  graveyards  of  the  Christian  world,  that  from  the 
slab  and  obelisk  they  may  blot  out  the  Bible.  See ! 
he  bends,  arid  with  light  of  lantern  reads :  "  I  am 
the  resurrection  and  the  life;"  "Blessed  are  the 
dead  ; "  "  In  my  Father's  house  are  many  mansions." 
Now  he  seizes  chisel  and  mallet,  and  begins.  Chip  ! 
chip !  chip  !  The  lone  night-winds  as  they  travel 
o'er  the  spot  take  up  upon  their  dusky  wings  a 
burden  sadder  than  they  ever  bore,  —  the  sob,  the 
sigh,  the  low-toned  throb  of  heart-chords  snapping ; 


78        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

for,  henceforth,  the  chamber  of  the  dying  shall  be 
one  of  horrors,  death's  rule  a  "  reign  of  terror,"  and 
the  graveyard  "the  abomination  of  desolation."  I 
need  not  imagine  more,  though  the  half  is  not  yet 
pictured;  for  the  fruits  of  Christianity  in  manners, 
in  civilization,  in  treatment  of  criminals  and  of  the 
insane ;  in  homes  for  age,  for  orplians,  for  widows,  for 
idiots,  for  outcast  women ;  in  popular  education,  and 
in  kindred  generous  and  gracious  institutions,  —  these 
all  must  also  suffer  destruction  before  we  shall  have 
by  any  means  attained  unto  the  extermination  of 
either  the  Book  or  the  Faith.  • 
S^  5.  Is  the  mission  of  Christianity  a  superfluity  by 
reason  of  the  results  of  our  intellectual  age  ?  Let 
human  nature,  let  man,  reply.  Is  there  any  change 
such  as  to  render  the  further  existence  of  our 
faith  unnecessary  ?  As  generation  after  generation 
arises,  see  we  not  the  past  repeated  ?  Hear  we  not 
the  same  queries  voiced  by  human  hearts,  human 
memories,  human  consciences  ?  Amidst  vast  changes, 
if  we  go  deep  enough,  shall  we  not  find  7nan  un- 
changed ? 

(1.)  Listen  to  the  old,  old  question,  and  know  that 
it  is  prompted  by  something  in  man  other  than 
accidental,  in  condition  or  circumstances.  It  is  the 
question  of  "  a  conscience  of  sins,"  a  sense  of  wrong- 
doing, and  of  guilt  arising  thence.  You  cannot  bid 
down,  so  as  to  keep  down,  that  question :  "  Hoiu  can 
man  he  just  ivith  his  Maker  1 "  A  homely  question, 
indeed  ;  ay,  but  one  that  can  with  earthquake  might 
thrill  the  whole  inner  man,  and  in  answering  which 


CHRISTIANITY  AND   MENTAL  ACTIVITY.  79 

man  has  steeped  the  earth  in  blood,  bleached  it 
with  bones  of  weary  pilgrims,  and  wrapped  it  in  smoke 
of  countless  sacrificial  altars.  It  must  be  answered. 
What  hath  modern  science  to  say  in  response  ? 
Nothing  that  commands  for  one  moment  the  accept- 
ance of  intelligent  conscience.  What  has  matter,  as 
it  rolls  through  space;  marbles,  though  veined  with 
beauty ;  gems,  though  aglow  with  fiery  splendor ; 
corals,  though  fashioned  after  the  similitude  of  a 
palace ;  life,  death,  force,  —  what  have  they  to  do 
with  a  query  sighed  forth  by  a  self-conscious  and 
self-convicted  spirit  ?  "  It 's  not  in  us,"  the  solemn 
heights  reply.  "  It 's  not  in  us,"  the  dark,  unfathomed 
caves  of  earth  respond.  Christianity  has  proven  her 
power  to  meet  the  need.  She  owns  that  power  to- 
day. 

(2.)  And  there  is  the  demand  for  inner  rectification 
of  nature.  There  is  a  deep-seated  sore  within.  The  '^ 
ideal  of  right  is  there.  The  endeavor  to  realize  it  is 
made,  but  the  failure  is  total.  And  this  involves  con- 
flict the  most  stern  and  anguish  the  most  bitter. 
"  When  I  would  do  good,  evil  is  present  with  me  ;  the 
evil  I  icould  not,  that  I  do."  I  pay  a  visit  to  the 
sages  of  physical  and  of  transcendental  wisdom,  and 
with  impassioned  earnestness  ask  of  their  chief, 

"  Canst  thou  not  minister  to  a  mind  diseased, 
Pluck  from  the  memory  a  rooted  sorrow, 
Raze  out  the  written  troubles  of  the  brain, 
And  by  some  sweet  oblivious  antidote 
Cleanse  the  stuffed  bosons  of  the  perilous  stuff. 
Which  weighs  upon  the  heart  ?  " 


80        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

Perhaps  he  will  tell  me  that  sin  is  a  necessaiy 
^  stage  in  my  moral  development;  and  that  wherever 
man  is,  —  in  the  brothel,  in  the  gin-mill,  on  the  gal- 
lows, —  he  is  on  the  way  to  God  ;  and  that  the  only 
possible  error  that  can  arise,  is  this, —  that  by  lack  of 
effort  the  man  remains  a  little  longer  than  he  might 
in  either  one  of  the  above-named  localities.  From 
such  my  inner  being  turns,  as  it  utters,  "  Miserable 
comforters  are  ye  all  1 "  Christianity  meets  the  want. 
It  offers,  and  it  has,  —  yes,  it  has  effected,  thorough 
renewal  of  the  "  hidden  man  of  the  heart."  It  has 
brought  a  clean  thing  out  of  an  unclean.  It  is  doing 
so  to-day :  in  some  one  spot  of  this  old  globe,  day  by 
day,  it  is  transforming  and  emancipating  and  har- 
monizing the  inner  principles  and  powers  of  man  ; 
for  it  is  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation  to  every  one 
that  believeth. 

(3.)  And  man  asks, — as  he  looks  up  into  the  vastness 
of  creation,  and  round  upon  the  strangely  checkered 
aspect  of  life,  and  on  through  the  dim,  trackless  future ; 
-  when  woes  fill  his  cup  of  life,  and  disaster  crashes 
upon  disaster,  and  helplessness  is  the  o'ermastering 
feeling  of  his  sinking  heart,  —  Is  there  One  above  all 
•^7  others  to  whom  I  may  carry  my  load,  pour  forth  my 
tale  of  desolation  ?  Or  is  it  indeed  true  that  he 
heeds  not,  neither  can  help,  —  as  helpless  as 

"  The  gods  who  haunt 
The  lucid  interspace  of  world  and  world, 
"Where  never  creeps  a  cloud,  or  moves  a  wind, 
-  Nor  ever  falls  the  least  white  star  of  snow, 

Nor  ever  lowest  roll  of  thunder  moans, 
Nor  sound  of  human  sorrow  mounts  to  mar 
Their  sacred,  everlasting  calm  !  " 


< 


CHRISTIANITY  AND   MENTAL  ACTIVITY.  81 

Vain  to  lead  me  to  "  an  altar  with  this  inscription, 
'  To  an  unknown  God.' "  Ay,  and  as  vain  to  tell  me  ^ 
of  a  "  power  that  makes  for  righteousness."  I  want 
"  the  living  God."  I  am  a  person,  and  my  God  must 
he  a  person.  Out  of  the  light,  ye  sages,  Spencer, 
Arnold !  Let  me  to  His  side  in  whom  resides  wisdom, 
at  least,  —  at  least  as  great  as  yours,  that  to  my 
heart's  longing  cry,  "  Show  me  the  Father ! "  I  may 
from  hi^  own  lips  catch  the  words  of  strength  and 
solace :  "  He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father." 

(4.)  And,  once  again,  man  asks  for  light.  It  is  as 
he  sits  yonder  in  darkened  chamber  beside  his  dead. 
To  her  in  youth's  jocund  days  his  heart  went  out, 
and  round  hers  twined  its  tendrils.  They  were  lovely 
and  beautiful  as  they  grew  in  wisdom,  confidence,  and 
love.  But  the  ruthless  blast  swept  o'er  her,  and  in 
the  very  pride  of  motherhood  she  gave  up  the  ghost ; 
her  sun  went  down  while  it  was  yet  noon.  And  soon 
he  must  "  bury  his  dead  out  of  his  sight."  What  is 
thy  mission  and  what  thy  meaning,  0  Death  ?  Dost 
thou,  indeed,  end  all  ?  or  through  thee  pass  we  back 
again,  as  raindrops,  into  the  vast  immensity  of  the  all, 
—  individuality,  personality,  forever  lost  ?  or  shall  we 
live  again?  It  is  not  sentimentalism  that  thus  speaks. 
Strongest  minds  have  heaved  the  lead  in  these  mys- 
terious depths.  Mightiest  hearts  have  quaked  with 
strange  terror  in  presence  of  these  problems.  He 
who  is  Christianity,  Himself  replies.  In  word  he 
answered ;  better  far,  in  ivork  he  responded ;  best  of 
all,  in  his  own  person  he  grappled  with,  wrested  the 
sceptre  from,  the  king  of  terrors,  and  o'er  his  prostrate 

^  /^'^  OF  THk"*'^^*^ 


82        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

form  marched  forth  from  death's  dominion  with  the 
note  of  triumph  on  his  lip :  "  I  am  the  resurrection 
and  the  life."  "He  brought  back,  not  the  shadow, 
but  the  substance  of  immortal  man,"  as  said  R  Hall. 
"  For  now  is  Christ  risen  from  the  dead,  and  become 
the  first  fruits  of  them  that  sleep." 

Friends,  these  are  the  truisms  of  our  faith.  Through 
these,  attended  by  the  grace  of  the  Lord  and  Giver  of 
life,  Christianity  hath  won  her  way  hitherk).  Nor 
is  there  trace  of  feebleness  or  of  age  in  her  fair  form 
to-day,  nor  hectic  flush  on  her  cheek,  nor  halt  in 
her  gait,  nor  haze  in  her  eye.  She  is  mighty  as 
when  she  went  forth  to  vanquish  the  Vandal,  civil- 

/  ize  the  Celt,  hallow  the  Hun,  gather  in  the  Goth,- 
and  win  the  worshippers  of  Woden  from  the  fierce- 
ness of  their  temple  worship  and  their  forest  sports. 
She  is  entering  new  regions,  and  intends  to  conquer ; 
and  they  feel  this,  and  are  troubled.  Hoary  creeds 
and  gory  superstitions  tremble  at  her  approach.  She 
comes  to  make  men  think,  and,  thus,  to  overturn. 
Eevolutionist,  indeed,  she  is !  Monopoly  of  power, 
of  thought,  of  joy  in  life,  she  comes  to  overturn. 
Her  mission  is  race  wide  and  is  full  of  mercy,  with- 
out partiality  and  without  hypocrisy;  knowing  no 
man  after  the  flesh,  nor  giving  flattering  titles  unto 
any ;  her  smile  is  hope,  her  presence  a  benediction. 
Judging  from  former  victories,  and  studying  her  in 
the  light  of  prophecy,  we  look  forward  with  assured 
confidence  of  ultimate,  universal   supremacy.      Her 

4'  Head  " ascended  that  he  might  fill  all  things"     And 
he  is  achieving  his  intent.     His  ideas,  principles,  are 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  MENTAL  ACTIVITY.  83 

silently  but  surely  permeating  society, — in  commerce, 
honesty ;  in  law,  justice ;  in  government,  liberty ;  in 
art,  purity ;  in  society,  gentleness,  tenderness,  mutual 
helpfulness,  world-wide  charity.  As  she  advances  in 
her  career. 


for 


"  Flowers  laugh  before  her  on  their  beds, 
And  fragi-ance  in  her  footing  treads ; " 

*'  She  doth  wear 
The  godhead's  most  benignant  grace  ; 
Nor  know  we  anything  so  fair 
As  is  the  smile  upon  her  face." 

With  full  assurance  of  faith  we  anticipate  the  time 
when  through  her  influences  her  Founder  shall  fulfil 
the  glowing  prophecy,  "  And  on  his  head  were  many 
crowns."  I  see  the  grand  procession  gathering  to  the 
coronation.  Yonder  are  Herschel  and  Kepler  and 
Copernicus  and  Galileo,  at  the  head  of  the  astronomic 
sages.  They  draw  nigh  to  crown  him;  and  as  he 
stoops  to  receive  the  gift,  I  hear  them  exclaim :  "  The 
heavens  are  the  work  of  thy  hands,  the  moon  and  the 
stars  which  thou  hast  ordained."  And  yonder  I  see 
the  great  chiefs  of  geologic  science,  and  their  sumless 
followers :  there  are  Hugh  Miller,  and  Buckland,  and 
Dana;  and  as  he  stoops  to  receive  their  offering 
thus  they  declare :  "  Of  old  didst  thou  lay  the  foun- 
dations of  the  earth ;  the  strength  of  the  hills  is  thine 
also."  And,  see,  yonder  the  great  old  masters  lead  up 
their  ranks, — Angelico,  Angelo,  Da  Vinci;  and  as  they 
present  their  tribute,  I  hear  them  say :  "  Blessed  are 
our  eyes,  for  we  have  seen  the  King  in  his  beauty." 


84        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

And  there  is  another  surpassing  far  all  these  in  power 
to  touch  his  heart.  It  is  woman, — "  redeemed,  regen- 
erated, disenthralled  "  woman ;  and  at  the  head  of  the 
illustrious  throng  there  is  the  first  mother  of  us  all, 
and  by  her  side  His  oivn.  To  them  he  stoops,  —  is 
there  not  haze  in  his  eye  ?  —  and  as  their  gentle 
hands  place  in  his  their  choicest  diadem,  thus  they 
exclaim:  "When  thou  tookest  upon  thee  to  deliver 
man,  thou  didst  not  abhor  the  virgin's  womb."  It  is 
enough.  Let  us  conclude  by  chanting,  in  harmony 
with  such  a  prospect,  — 

"All  hail  the  power  of  Jesus'  name  ; 
Let  angels  prostrate  fall ; 
Bring  forth  the  royal  diadem, 
And  crown  him  Lord  of  all. " 


IV. 
THE    PLACE    OF    CONSCIENCE. 

By  REV.  MARK  HOPKINS,  D.D. 


IV. 
THE   PLACE   OF   CONSCIENCE. 

By  rev.  mark  HOPKINS,  D.D. 

THE  PRELUDE. 

TT  is  one  thing  to  lecture  to  an  audience,  and 
-^  another  thing  to  lecture  to  the  general  public. 
It  was  my  intention,  when  I  agreed  to  speak  here,  to 
discuss  the  subject  as  I  did  when  I  spoke  last  before 
the  Lowell  Institute,  —  working  directly  upon  the 
blackboard,  and  not  reading  at  all ;  but  when  I 
noticed  the  reports  of  the  lectures  given,  and  un- 
derstood the  wishes  of  the  committee,  I  saw  that  it 
would  not  be  in  the  line  of  what  had  been  presented 
on  this  platform,  if  I  should  deliver  a  lecture  which 
could  not  be  reported  so  far  as  the  use  of  the  black- 
board was  concerned. 

It  was  the  custom  of  the  distinguished  founder  of 
this  lectureship  to  begin  with  a  prelude,  and  I  follow 
the  custom.  As  was  fit,  his  preludes  usually  con- 
sisted of  a  discussion  of  some  popular  subject  or  topic 
of  the  day.  The  subject  of  "  Man's  Upbuilding  versus 
Development "  is  hardly  that,  and  yet  I  venture  to 
adopt  it  as  having  been  so  much  before  the  public, 


88        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

and  also  as  somewhat  connected  with  the  lecture 
that  is  to  follow. 

We  find  ourselves  in  the  midst  of  an  orderly  uni- 
verse.    Everywhere  around  us  we  find  unity  in  the 
midst  of  variety,  giving  us  at  once  the  principle  of 
;'  order  and  of  beauty.     The  perception  of  this  unity, 
^    as  now  known,  is  due  to  modern  science.     It  was  so 
far  removed  from  the  primitive  and  unaided  thought 
of  man,  that  he  supposed  the  heavens,  the  ocean,  and 
the  regions  below  to  be  subject  to  different  gods,  and 
to  be  ruled  by  different  laws.     It  was  a  great  step, 
and  the  cause  of  a  high  joy,  when  man  was  able  to 
extend  the  laws  which  govern  matter  on  the  earth 
to  the   heavenly  bodies;    and,  again,  when   he  was 
able  to  find,  by  means  of  light,  that  the  same  sub- 
"4-  stances  which  are  found  here  on  the  earth  are  dis- 
covered in  the  sun  and  in  the  remotest  star.     And 
the    unity   and    order   thus   found   around  us   and 
throughout  a  measureless  space  are  equally  disclosed 
among  the  different  species  of  organized  beings  that 
^^  are  shown  by  the  microscope  as  peopling  a  drop  of 
water. 

But  this  was  not  always  so.  It  is  equally  the 
doctrine  of  science  and  of  revelation  that  there  was  a 
time  when  chaos  reigned,  and  when  this  planet  was 
devoid  of  order  and  of  life.  The  accepted  doctrine  of 
science  at  present  is,  that  the  material  of  the  whole 
system,  celestial  and  terrestrial,  was  originally  star- 
"^  dust  diffused  in  space,  that  has  at  length,  after  un- 
told ages,  been  condensed  and  brought  to  its  present 
order.     Allowing  this,  we  naturally  inquire  by  what 


THE  PLACE   OF  CONSCIENCE.  89 

causes   and  in  what  manner   this   result  has   been 
readied. 

In  doing  this  there  are  three  words,  development, — 
or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  evolution,  —  growth,  and 
upbuilding,  each  indicating  a  different  process,  which 
I  wish  to  consider. 

Of  these,  the  first  is  development.  What,  then,  do 
we  mean  by  that  ?  In  strictness,  it  presupposes  a 
whole  that  is  enveloped,  and  is  then  enlarged  and 
unfolded  by  a  process  from  within.  Of  this  a  rose- 
bud is  a  good  example.  In  that,  all  that  is  to  be  lies 
in  miniature,  enveloped  in  its  covering,  and,  by  a  . 
process  from  within,  it  is  brought  out,  developed  into  /^ 
largeness  and  beauty  and  fragrance.  But  in  its  use 
in  common  life  the  term  is  not  confined  in  its  mean- 
ing to  a  strict  development  and  unfolding ;  it  is 
applied  in  any  case  where  a  whole  already  existing 
is  enlarged  by  a  process  from  within.  Thus  we  say 
of  a  muscle,  that  it  becomes  developed,  and  of  the 
boy,  that  he  may  develop  into  a  fine  man.  In  every 
case,  if  the  word  be  used  according  to  the  definition 
in  any  dictionary,  or  according  to  the  usage  of  com- 
mon speech  and  the  conceptions  of  those  who  use 
that  speech,  there  must  be,  either  in  idea  or  in  reality, 
a  previously  existing  whole. 

Now,  what  I  object  to  is,  that  this  word,  thus  defi- 
nite in  its  meaning  and  well  understood,  has  been  so 
used  as  to  involve  a  practical  fallacy.  It  has  been  so 
used  as  to  imply  that  there  was  in  the  original  star- 
dust  the  whole  of  what  we  now  see,  and  that  the 
present  order  has  come  out  of  that,  with  no  external 


90        CHKIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

y:j^ency,  by  the  process  known  to  the  common  mind 
as  development.  The  whole  subject  is  vast  and 
obscure ;  in  the  minds  of  common  men  it  lies  in  a 
misty  way,  and  when  by  the  use  of  a  common  term 
they  hear  the  process  of  world-making  identified  by 
men  of  high  scientific  standing  with  one  with  which 
they  are  familiar,  they  readily  accept  what  is  said, 
and  suppose  they  understand  that  process. 

But  while   the   development  theory  has  had   the 
advantage   of    this   fallacy  working   insidiously  and 
"^   -     unconsciously,  the  ablest  advocate  of  the  theory,  Mr. 
A      Herbert  Spencer,  has  found  it  necessary  to  frame  a 
^      definition  of  development,  or  evolution,  which  entirely 
^-.  ^        excludes  the  idea  of  any  whole,  either  ideal  or  physi- 
cal, and   which   is,  moreover,  equally  applicable   to 
processes  of  the  most  diverse  and  even  opposite  kind. 
-^       His  definition  of  evolution  is,  that  "  it  is  a  change 
^^     .from  an  indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  defi- 
^  'nite,  coherent  heterogeneity,  through  continuous  dif- 
\>      ferentiations   and   integrations."     There !     Now  you 
^      know   what    evolution    or   development   is,  and  we 
will  proceed  to  apply  the  definition  to  the  process  of 
/Sj       making  a  world  out  of  star-dust, 
■o  This  star-dust  was  the  indefinite,  incoherent  homo- 

geneity. That  it  was  indefinite  and  incoherent  we 
know,  but  how  he  could  know,  or  have  a  right  to  say, 
that  that  out  of  which  was  to  come  such  a  variety  of 
substances  and  beings  was  homogeneous,  I  do  not 
know.  But,  be  that  as  it  may,  there  began  to  be 
differentiations.  One  part  of  this  indefinite,  inco- 
herent, homogeneous  star-dust  began  to  (Ji|fer  from 


THE   PLACE   OF   CONSCIENCE.  91 

another  part,  and  these  differentiations  were  continu- 
ous. A  part,  we  may  suppose,  became  oxygen,  a  part 
carbon,  a  part  gold,  and  so  on,  of  all  the  so-called 
simple  substances  of  which  this  globe  was  origi- 
nally composed.  Previous  to  these  differentiations, 
however,  or  in  connection  with  them,  there  must 
have  been  one  great  integration  without  differentia- 
tion, by  which  the  star-dust  was  brought  into  a  mass. 
After  that,  different  integrations  might  go  on,  form- 
ing water  and  granite  and  lime-rock  and  trees  and 
men. 

In  all  this  it  will  be  noticed  that  there  were  differ- 
ent processes,  involving  different  forces.  There  was 
first  the  process  of  aggregation,  by  which  the  indefi- 
nite and  incoherent  particles  were  brought  towards  a 
centre  and  became  condensed  into  a  mass.  This  was 
effected  by  the  force  of  gravitation.  But  these  par- 
ticles, atoms,  molecules,  whatever  they  were,  being 
originally  incoherent,  needed  to  cohere,  and  so  the 
force  of  cohesion  came  into  play.  Again,  it  was  not 
sufficient  that  alien  particles  should  cohere.  What 
has  happened  since  was  foreshadowed  at  that  early 
day.  There  were  affinities,  and  immense  excitement 
in  consequence.  The  amorous  oxygen  rushed  to  its 
hydrogen,  the  acid  to  its  alkali,  and  the  two  became 
one.  No  particle  missed  its  true  affinity,  and  hence 
marriages  were  formed  that  have  known  of  no  divorce 
for  these  thousands  of  years.  The  frequency  of  mod- 
ern divorce  finds  no  countenance  in  the  doings  of 
those  ancient  days.  If,  now,  we  bring  these  several 
affinities  under  the  common   name   of  chemical  af- 


92        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

finity,  we  have  a  new  force  by  which,  in  connection 
with  gravitation  and  cohesion,  all  the  substances  on 
the  earth  were  formed  up  to  the  point  of  organization, 
all  the  different  processes  being  covered  by  the  one 
word,  development ;  and,  if  we  allow  that  the  original 
substance  was  homogeneous,  being  really  a  change 
from  an  indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  defi- 
nite, coherent  heterogeneity,  through  continuous  dif- 
ferentiations and  integrations. 

Having  now  brought  the  earth  up  by  the  definition 
to  the  point  where  it  has  a  sufficient  basis  for  organi- 
zation, let  us  try  it  upon  that.  And  here  we  will  take 
an  egg,  —  the  white  of  an  egg,  for  it  is  from  that 
that  the  chick  is  formed.  This  white  of  the  egg  is 
the  indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity.  It  seems  at 
least  to  be  homogeneous.  But  after  the  application 
of  heat  for  a  few  days  differentiations  begin  to  show 
themselves,  and  these  are  continuous.  The  blood- 
vessels, the  bones,  the  lungs,  the  eyes,  the  bill,  the 
little  feathers,  begin  to  appear,  and  to  form  themselves 
into  definite,  coherent  heterogeneities,  till  at  length 
the  perfect  animal  is  formed.  It  then,  by  means  of 
a  little  prominence  that  had  been  accidentally  de- 
veloped on  the  top  of  its  bill,  chips  its  shell  and 
comes  out,  and,  if  it  be  a  chicken,  listens  to  the  cluck 
of  its  mother,  but  if  it  be  a  duck,  regardless  of  the 
cluck,  makes  for  the  nearest  water  by  an  instinct  that 
was  originally  developed  from  the  definite,  coherent 
heterogeneities,  and  transmitted  by  heredity. 

You  see,  then,  that  the  definition  applies  equally 
to  the  formation  of  a  world  and  the  formation  of  a 


THE  PLACE   OF  CONSCIENCE.  93 

chicken,  and  I  ask  yon  of  what  value  a  formula  of 
words  can  be  that  can  cover  such  diverse  and  opposite 
processes  ?  If  I  were  to  define  a  horse  as  a  being, 
and  a  calf  as  a  being,  thus  covering  both  by  one  defi- 
nition, and  should  then  infer  that  a  horse  is  a  calf,  it 
would  be  but  a  trick  of  words ;  and  this  is  the  same. 

But  it  is  time  to  inquire  whether  the  process  just 
spoken  of  is  one  of  development.  It  is  not,  unless 
we  confound,  as  is  wrongly  coming  to  be  done,  de- 
velopment with  growth.  Growth,  which  is  the  next 
word  and  process  of  which  I  wish  to  speak,  is  a 
special  process  which  starts  from  a  cell  or  germ  that 
is  alive,  and  is  carried  on  through  the  agency  and 
superintendence  of  what  we  call  life.  It  was  said  at 
one  time  that  protoplasm  was  the  condition  of  life. 
This  may  be  true,  but  there  is  dead  as  well  as  living 
protoplasm,  and  no  chemist  can  tell  the  difference,  or 
find  out  what  that  subtile  thing  is  without  which, 
protoplasm  or  no  protoplasm,  there  will  be  no  growth. 
I  would  discourage  no  research ;  but  it  is  my  belief 
that  my  friend,  Dr.  Barker,  who  seemed,  in  his  recent 
speech  here  in  Boston,  so  confident  that  he  and  his 
coadjutors  will  soon  capture  life,  will  do  that  when  vV' 
the  boy  who  chases  the  foot  of  the  rainbow  shall  find 
the  pot  of  money  that  is  buried  there.  Not  proto- 
plasm, then,  but  living  protoplasm,  is  the  condition 
of  growth ;  and  this  process,  I  insist,  is  to  be  dis- 
tinguished from  that  of  development.  There  is  in 
growth  no  previous  whole,  no  miniature  parts,  noth- 
ing in  that  from  which  the  growth  starts  to  indicate 
what  the  outcome  is  to  be.     Is  it  said  that  the  chicken 


■  94        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

is  in  the  egg  potentially  ?  Yes,  but  only  as  the  ship 
is  in  the  trees  of  the  forest  and  in  the  iron  unwrought. 
,  The  material  from  which  the  chicken  is  to  be  formed 
/^s  there,  but  the  bones  and  the  bill  and  the  muscles 
and  the  tendons  are  not  there.  There  is  nothing 
there  but  the  material  out  of  which  the  animal  is  to 
be  formed  and  an  unknown  something  which  we  call 
life.  Nor  is  there  any  one  centre  from  which  the 
growth  of  the  animal  starts  in  such  a  way  as  to  indi- 
cate what  may  be  called  development  from  a  centre. 
Each  bone  starts  from  a  centre  of  its  own  and  pushes 
out  towards  the  other  bones,  and  becomes  joined  to 
them,  not  organically  but  mechanically,  by  sutures 
and  ligaments,  so  that  the  putting  together  of  the 
skeleton  is  singularly  like  the  putting  together  of  any 
piece  of  machinery  in  a  mechanical  way.  The  pro- 
cess is  totally  unlike  any  other.  Even  in  the  egg, 
where  the  whole  material  for  the  formation  of  the 
animal  is  given,  the  only  similarity  between  that  and 
a  proper  development  is,  that  the  process  is  carried 
on  by  an  agency  that  is  not  discerned  as  separate 
from  the  material.  But  how  if  we  take  a  bunch  of 
grapes  ?  Here  the  whole  process  is  carried  on  through 
J!^  a  stem  not  the  tenth  of  an  inch  in  diameter ; 
and  by  an  agency  and  with  a  skill  of  which  man 
knows  nothing  the  minor  stems  are  formed,  and  the 
delicate  covering,  and  the  pulp,  and  the  seed  for 
the  growth  of  other  grapes,  while  the  material  for  the 
whole  is  gathered,  not  at  all  from  the  seed  from  which 
the  vine  sprang,  nor  from  the  vine  itself  except  as 
an  instrument,  but  from  the  earth  and  the  air  and  the 


THE  PLACE  OF  CONSCIENCE.  95 

ocean.  This  being  so,  what  significance  is  there  to 
the  word  development,  or  evolution,  when  applied  to 
such  a  'process  ?  No,  it  is  growth,  by  which  word  a 
process  is  indicated,  the  antecedents  and  conditions 
of  which  we  know,  but  of  the  cause  and  method  of  ""^ 
which  we  know  nothing,  absolutely  nothing,  and  we 
may  as  well  say  so. 

That  the  process  of  growth,  whether  of  the  chicken 
or  the  grapes,  is  covered,  equally  with  the  condensa- 
tion of  star-dust  and  the  formation  of  worlds,  by  the 
definition  of  Mr.  Spencer,  I  agree ;  but  how  far  does 
development,  as  thus  defined,  go  to  account  for  either  ? 
If  not  put  forth  to  account  for  them,  it  is  commonly 
supposed  to  be,  and  to  do  it.  Does  it  do  that  ?  Let 
us  see.  "  Evolution,"  it  is  said,  "  is  a  change  from  an 
indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  definite,  co- 
herent heterogeneity."  It  is  a  change,  and  that  change 
is  a  continuous  one,  leading  to  a  result.  That  is  all 
that  the  definition  says ;  that  is  all  that  development, 
according  to  the  definition,  is  or  does.  But  does  the 
statement  of  the  fact  of  a  change  account  for  the 
change  ?  or  of  the  fact  of  a  result  account  for  a  re- 
sult ?  No.  Taking  this  definition  of  evolution,  and 
regarding  it  as  an  attempt  to  account  for  the  present 
state  of  things,  it  would  read  thus  :  "  A  change  from 
an  indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  definite, 
coherent  heterogeneity,  through  continuous  differen- 
tiations and  intcOTations,  is  the  cause  of  a  change 
from  an  indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  defi- 
nite, coherent  heterogeneity,  through  continuous  dif- 
ferentiations and  integrations." 


f 


96        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

It  only  remains  in  this  connection  to  speak  of  up- 
hinlding,  as  distinguished  from  both  development  and 
growth. 

Why  do  we  never  speak  of  a  house  as  developed  ? 
For  two  reasons.  One  is,  that  in  the  building  of  a 
house  the  agent  is  seen  to  be  distinct  from  the  mate- 
rial. It  is  seen  that  that  which  moves  the  material 
is  outside  of  it,  and  cannot  possibly  be  a  property  or 
tendency  of  the  material  to  be  thus  moved.  But  the 
main  reason  is  the  want  of  continuity.  There  are 
such  breaks  between  the  foundation  and  the  super- 
structure, and  between  the  different  stories,  that  what 
is  above  could  not  possibly  have  originated  from 
what  is  below.  This  would  necessitate  for  the  build- 
ing of  the  house  an  agent  outside  of  the  house.  This 
is  the  turning-point,  and  is  seen  to  be  so  by  those 
who  hold  to  development.  Hence,  mainly,  the  in- 
terest in  the  question  of  spontaneous  generation. 
Hence  the  violent  supposition  by  Professor  Tyndall 
that  there  may  have  been  sensation  originally  in  the 
star-dust,  and  probably  is  now  in  the  rocks.  Hence 
his  supposition  —  I  think  I  may  say  the  absurd 
supposition  —  that  an  eye  might  be  formed  by  the 
action  of  light  falling  on  an  undifferentiated  organism 
vaguely  sensitive  all  over.  Hence  the  anxiety  to 
show  that  there  is  no  essential  difference  between 
man  and  the  brutes ;  and  hence,  as  you  have  seen  in 
the  definition  of  Mr.  Spencer,  the  word  continuous  as 
applied  to  differentiations.  Now,  what  we  affirm  is, 
that  there  is  no  such  continuity.  We  say  that  there 
are  breaks  in  the  upward  progress  of  nature  such  that 


THE  PLACE   OF   CONSCIENCE.  97 

there  could  be  no  power  in  the  lower  to  pass  over 
into  and  produce,  or  become,  the  higher. 

These  two  modes  of  conceiving  of  the  upward  prog- 
ress in  nature  and  of  the  relation  of  its  forces  may 
be  represented  by  two  forms  of  a  pyramid.  On  one 
tlie  side  will  .be  an  inclined  plane  with  no  break. 
On  the  other  there  will  be  breaks,  and  the  pyramid 
will  be  composed  of  different  platforms. 

[The  lecturer  here  illustrated  upon  the  blackboard, 
by  means  of  pyramidical  designs,  his  statements.] 

So  I  represented  it  some  years  since  in  lectures 
given  before  the  Lowell  Institute.  In  this  pyramid 
each  platform  represents  a  new  force,  and  one  which, 
as  I  affirm,  could  not  have  been  developed  from  the 
force  or  forces  below.  It  is  contrary  to  all  our  con- 
ceptions of  causation,  that  a  force  which  reveals  itself 
only  as  it  overcomes  a  lower  force  should  be  devel- 
oped from  that  force.  But  that  is  the  relation  of  the 
forces  here.  If  cohesion  were  not  a  stronger  force 
than  gravitation,  everything  would  be  at  a  dead  level. 
What  prevents  the  wall  above  us  from  cpming  down  ? 
Nothing  but  cohesion  as  a  stronger  force  than  gravi- 
tation, which  is  constantly  endeavoring  to  bring  it 
down.  Or,  take  the  force  connected  with  the  growth 
of  vesjetables  as  it  is  related  to  the  three  lower  forces 
on  which  it  is  conditioned,  and  how  could  the  vegeta- 
ble get  its  food  as  it  lies  combined  in  the  earth  and 
floats  in  the  air,  if  it  did  not  overcome  cohesion  and 
chemical  affinity,  or  how  could  it  lift  its  material  one 
hundred  and  fifty  feet  into  the  air  if  it  did  not  over- 
come gravitation  ?     And  shall  we  suppose  that  a  force 

7 


98        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

working  not  only  in  opposition  to  lower  forces,  but 
in  absolute  defiance  of  them,  was  developed  from 
those  forces  ?  And  as  the  three  lower  forces  were 
an  absolute  condition  for  vegetation,  so  was  vegeta- 
tion an  absolute  condition  for  animal  life,  since  it  is 
the  one  great  function  of  vegetables  to  mediate  be- 
tween inorganic  matter  and  animals  by  furnishing 
them  their  whole  food,  which  vegetables  can,  and 
animals  cannot  procure  directly  from  that  matter. 

We  have,  then,  inorganic  matter  with  its  three  forces 
as  a  foundation  for  the  building ;  we  have  vegetables 
as  the  first  story,  the  lower  animals  as  the  second, 
and  man  as  the  third ;  and  what  we  say  is,  that  at 
every  upward  step  there  must  have  been  a  supervis- 
ing agent  to  introduce  the  superior  force,  and  to  cor- 
relate it  with  the  forces  below. 

But,  as  bearing  on  the  upward  continuity  of  move- 
ment, which  is  essential  to  the  development  system, 
there  is  one  point  which  may  not  be  omitted.  I 
refer  to  the  sexual  relation  as  it  exists  both  in  vege- 
tables and  in  animals,  and  which  might  almost  seem 
a  device  for  the  very  purpose  of  excluding  the  possi- 
bility of  such  an  hypothesis.  A  single  case  might  be 
explained  away ;  but  when  we  see  this  relation  run- 
ning through  the  whole  animate  creation,  so  that  the 
continuance  of  its  higher  forms  is  dependent  upon  it, 
and  reflect  on  the  impossibility  either  that  the  sexes 
should  have  been  developed  pari  passu  through  the 
untold  ages  required  by  the  system  to  reach  the 
needed  point,  or  that  the  individuals  should  have 
been  preserved  in  any  other  way,  we  must  see  how 


THE  PLACE   OF   CONSCIENCE.  99 

formidable  the  difficulty  is,  and  how  much  more 
reasonable  it  is  to  suppose  that  in  the  beginning 
"  God  created  them  male  and  female." 

The  plausibility  of  development  is  derived  in  part 
from  the  fact  that  the  force  seems  to  reside  in  the 
material,  but  more  from  the  way  in  which  the  differ- 
ent forms  of  vegetable  and  animal  life  seem  to  run 
into  each  other.  But  on  the  supposition  of  upbuild- 
ing by  a  wise  Master  Builder,  this  is  accounted  for 
by  the  need  there  is  in  the  system  of  symmetry  and 
of  sympathy.  If  the  points  of  transition  in  the  up- 
building from  one  story  to  another  were  visible,  the 
apparent  symmetry  and  unity  and  beauty  of  the 
whole  wouljd  be  impaired.  I  remember  to  have  seen 
an  account  of  a  piece  of  cabinet-work  so  deftly  joined  ^^ 
that  the  point  of  juncture  could  be  found  only  by  the 
preternatural  power  of  touch  possessed  by  a  blind 
man.  This  perfect  joining  was  required  for  unity 
and  beauty,  while  the  pieces  were  as  really  separate 
as  if  they  had  been  divided  by  the  wide  Atlantic. 
And  so  symmetry  requires  that  the  points  of  junc- 
ture in  nature  should  be  invisible,  while  such  points 
there  must  be.  As  between  plants  and  animals,  how- 
ever the  plant  may  simulate  animal  movements, 
there  must  he  a  line,  on  one  side  of  which  there  is 
sensation  and  on  the  other  not.  We  may  be  as  un- 
able to  decide  when  or  where  it  enters  as  we  are  to 
decide  when  or  where  tlie  first  ray  of  the  morning  j 
enters  the  darkness,  but  a  when  and  a  where  there 
must  be. 

And  so  of  sympathy.     I  know  of  nothing  more 


-4- 


100       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

wonderful  than  that  close  analogy  between  men  and 
animals  that  comes  from  their  sharing  a  common  ani- 
mal nature  that  so  brings  them  into  sympathy,  while 
there  is  yet  such  a  disparity  that  the  animals  are 
naturally  subject  to  man. 

Thus,  from  the  need  of  symmetry  and  of  sympathy, 
do  we  account  for  the  apparent  uniformity  in  the  up- 
ward movement  of  the  creation ;  while  we  find,  too, 
those  lines  of  separation  between  the  different  stories 
of  this  earthly  building  which  renders  it  impossible 
that  the  higher  should  have  been  developed  from  the 
lower. 

On  the  whole,  then,  I  find  myself  agreeing  with 
each  of  two  propositions  laid  down  by  a  man  who 
lived  nearly  two  thousand  years  ago.  With  the  first 
of  these  I  am  sure  you  will  agree,  and  with  the 
second  I  hope  you  will  agree  also.  These  proposi- 
tions are :  1st,  That  every  house  is  builded  by  some 
man ;  and,  2d,  That  he  that  built  all  things  is  God. 

THE  LECTURE. 

In  passing  to  the  lecture,  we  do  not  leave  upbuild- 
ing altogether.  In  the  lectures  already  referred  to, 
entitled  "  The  Outline  Study  of  Man,"  I  attempted 
to  show  not  only  that  there  was  an  upbuilding  from 
the  lowest  force  in  nature  to  man,  but  also  in  man 
himself,  and  that  the  principle  on  which  the  upbuild- 
ing was  carried  on  was  the  same  throughout.  I  at- 
tempted to  show  that  in  nature  the  principle  was  one 
of  perfect  subordination,  as  one  force  was  a  condition 


THE  PLACE   OF  CONSCIENCE.  101 

for  another,  and  of  limitation  on  the  part  of  each 
lower  force  to  such  action  as  might  best  serve  those 
above  it.  In  the  functions  of  tlie  body,  even,  I  at- 
tempted to  show  that  there  is  a  gradation  as  higher 
and  lower  according  to  the  same  law,  and  this,  not- 
withstanding the  circular  and  interdependent  nature 
of  all  vital  action.  Then  in  the  mind,  taking  its 
three  great  divisions,  intellect,  sensibility,  and  will,  I 
sought  to  show  that  intellect  was  lowest,  sensibility 
next,  and  then  will:  The  faculties,  or  functions,  of 
the  intellect,  as  presentative,  regulative,  representa- 
tive, and  elaborative,  I  sought  to  arrange  in  the  same 
way  ;  and  so  of  the  sensibility  and  the  will,  till  the 
whole  man  was  constructed.  That  was  the  comple- 
tion of  one  work.  The  man  was  constructed  and  put 
into  possession  of  himself 

At  this  point  the  work  of  upbuilding  on  the  part 
of  God  ceased,  but  only  that  it  might  be  taken  up  by 
man  on  the  model  which  God  had  set  before  him. 
Man,  having  faculties,  and  especially  active  principles, 
constructed  in  regular  gradation  as  lower  and  higher, 
was  to  use  them  in  accordance  with  the  same  grada- 
tion. The  powers  which  were  intended  to  rule  he 
was  to  cause  to  rule,  and  those  intended  to  serve  he 
w^as  to  cause  to  serve,  holding  every  lower  principle 
of  action  in  its  place  by  the  law  of  its  limitation,  and 
giving  full  scope  to  the  highest  as  having  nothing 
above  to  limit  it.  Thus  doing,  intelligently  bringing 
each  lower  spontaneity  and  principle  under  its  law, 
he  was  to  build  up  his  activities,  and  so  his  charac- 
ter, after  the  model  set  him  by  God  in  the  upbuilding 
of  his  univei'se. 


102       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

What  we  need  to  know,  then,  at  this  point  is,  what 
the  active  principles  of  our  frame  are,  and  how  they 
are  related  to  each  other  as  higher  or  lower,  as  subor- 
dinate or  supreme. 

In  regard  to  some  of  these  there  is  a  general  agree- 
ment. The  appetites,  as  a  condition  for  the  continu- 
ance of  life,  and  so  for  all  the  others,  are  the  lowest. 
These  are  good  in  themselves,  and,  held  in  their  place* 
are  only  good.  Then  come  the  instincts,  which  seem, 
as  sometimes  impulsive,  and  sometimes  regulative,  to 
be,  when  acting  on  their  own  line  and  without  being 
thwarted,  a  kind  of  divine  reason,  and  when  acting 
out  of  that  line,  a  kind  of  idiocy.  Next  we  have  the 
desires,  the  cravings  of  the  mind  for  those  things 
needed  for  its  own  well-being,  as  the  appetites  are 
for  things  needed  for  the  well-being  of  the  body. 
The  natural  affections,  as  of  parent  and  child,  are 
next  in  order.  These  have  in  them  an  element  of 
desire,  but  it  is  a  desire  for  the  good  of  others.  They 
are  strong  and  beautiful  in  the  lower  animals,  but 
become  doubly  beautiful  when  comprehended  and 
irradiated  by  a  higher  nature. 

Up  to  this  point  our  active  principles  are  impul- 
sive, as  distinguished  from  rational.  By  this  it  is 
meant  that  each  principle  has,  standing  over  against 
it,  its  own  object  from  which  it,  or  rather  the  being, 
is  to  derive  gratification,  and  that  it  goes  out  towards 
its  object  as  by  an  impulse  from  behind,  and,  without 
reflection  or  regard  to  consequences,  rests  in  it  till  it 
is  satiated,  if  that  be  possible ;  or  if,  as  in  the  desires, 
that  be  not  possible,  till  some  one  desire  becomes  the 


THE  PLACE  OF   CONSCIENCE.  103 

ruling  passion,  and  so  insatiate.  If  all  our  active 
powers  were  of  this  kind  they  would  become  a  mob. 
We  therefore  plainly  need  rational  or  governing 
powers. 

The  rational  principles  of  action,  therefore,  come 
next.  They  are  called  rational  because  they  imply 
a  comparison  between  different  principles  of  action, 
authority  over  them,  and  a  choice  between  them  by 
a  being  who  stands  above  and  comprehends  them. 
These  principles  are  said  by  Bishop  Butler,  Dugald 
Stewart,  Dr.  Wayland,  and  writers  on  morals  gener- 
ally, to  be  self-love  and  conscience.  This  enumeration 
I  think  defective.  I  have  never  seen,  for  example, 
in  any  list  of  the  active  powers.  Rights  put  down  as 
among  them.  But  I  would  inquire  of  this  audience 
whether  they  do  not  think  that  rights  are  among  the 
most  underlying,  general,  and  powerful  of  our  prin- 
ciples of  action  ?  What  will  a  man  fight  for  sooner 
than  his  rights  ?  What  but  his  rights  ought  he  to 
fight  for  ?  Our  conception  of  these  comes  in  connec- 
tion with  every  active  principle.  Among  the  first,  if 
not  the  very  first,  of  our  moral  ideas,  is  that  of  a 
right  to  ourselves,  —  that  is,  of  a  right  to  use  every 
power  we  have  for  its  appropriate  ends ;  and  when 
that  right  is  interfered  with,  our  nature  is  stirred  to 
its  lowest  depths.  If  the  idea  of  a  right,  or  of  rights, 
be  thus  an  active  principle,  it  is  of  course  rational, 
since  no  one  except  a  rational  being  can  have  a  con- 
ception of  rights. 

But  a  greater  omission,  in  my  view,  is  that  of  love, 
-^  moral  and  rational  love.     We  have  the  power  of 


104       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

disinterested  action.  We  have  the  power  of  making 
the  good  of  others,  without  reference  to  complacency 
in  their  character,  the  object  of  our  choice  and  effort, 
and  that  good  may  stand  over  against  our  power  of 
rational  choice,  as  food  stands  over  against  appetite, 
or  as  money  stands  over  against  the  desire  of  the 
miser.  The  good  of  others  may  be  so  apprehended 
that  the  pursuit  of  it  shall  become  an  absorbing  pas- 
sion. This  love  is  not  a  mere  emotion.  Its  central 
element  is  choice,  rational  choice,  and  no  emotion 
that  is  sacred  can  belong  to  a  love  that  does  not 
follow  this.  This  is  the  love  required  in  the  Bible 
as  the  central  spring  of  our  actions ;  and  it  is  re- 
markable that  Christian  moralists  should  have  con- 
structed their  systems  so  as  to  exclude  this,  or,  at  least, 
that  in  any  enumeration  of  our  active  powers  they 
should  not  have  given  it  the  place  where  it  is  put 
by  the  Bible,  and  where,  by  a  fair  analysis  of  our 
powers,  it  belongs.  Instead,  therefore,  of  accepting 
self-love  and  conscience  as  a  complete  enumeration 
of  our  governing  powers,  I  would  make  them  to 
be  rights,  self-love,  rational  and  moral  love,  and 
conscience. 

But  here  comes  the  question  about  the  place  of 
conscience.  Almost  universally  it  has  been  placed 
at  the  head  of  the  list,  with  its  object  over  against  it, 
like  the  rest,  and  not  differing  from  them  except 
as  supreme.  The  question  is,  whether  it  ought  to  be 
so  placed.  Let  us  see.  We  have  at  the  bottom  of 
the  list  appetite,  say  hunger,  and  over  against  it  food. 
We  have  instinct,  say  the  instinct  of  the  migratory 


THE   PLACE   OF   CONSCIENCE.  105 

bird,  and  over  against  it  a  warm  climate.  We  have 
desire,  say  of  power,  and  for  its  object  power.  We 
have  natural  affection,  as  of  the  parent,  and  for  its 
object  the  child.  We  have  rights,  and  for  their  object 
those  things  to  which  we  have  a  right.  We  have 
self-love,  and  over  against  it  our  own  good.  We 
have  moral  love,  and  over  against  it  the  good  of 
others.  Now,  shall  conscience  be  placed  next,  and 
over  against  tliat,  right,  or  the  right  ?  This  is  what 
has  been  done.  It  has  been,  and  is,  supposed  that 
right,  or  the  right  in  an  action,  is  immediately  and 
intuitively  perceived  by  the  conscience,  and  that  the 
action  is  to  be  done  solely  for  the  sake  of  that,  with 
no  regard  to  consequences  or  the  good  of  any  one. 
Those  who  hold  this  view  are  generally  careful  to  say 
that  it  is  quite  certain  that  an  action  thus  done  will 
result  in  good,  but  they  affirm  that  it  will  lower  its 
quality  and  tone  if  that  fact  be  so  known  as  to  have 
any  influence  in  determining  the  act.  They  seem  to 
think  that  if  the  whole  truth  were  clearly  seen,  the 
highest  virtue  would  be  impossible,  thus  making 
truth  hostile  to  virtue.  In  fact,  I  once  heard  regi'et 
expressed  that  this  regard  to  right  could  not  be  made 
to  stand  wholly  alone. 

But  there  is  another  view.  It  was  said  by  Sir 
James  Mackintosh,  though  it  has  been  little  no- 
ticed since,  that  the  immediate  object  of  conscience 
is  the  will  itself  According  to  this  the  conscience 
will  not,  like  the  other  active  principles,  have  an 
object  corresponding  to  it,  and  towards  which  it  is 
to  go  out ;  but  its  office  will  be,  when  two  objects  of 


106       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

choice  are  presented,  as  there  always  must  be  when 
a  choice  is  to  be  made,  to  prompt  the  will  to  choose 
the  higher  and  the  better.  If  this  be  so,  it  will  at 
once  change  the  place  of  conscience  from  the  top  of 
the  list,  and  place  it  by  itself  behind  the  will,  so  that 
the  man  shall  hear  a  voice  behind  him,  saying,  "  This 
is  the  way,  walk  ye  in  it." 

These  different  relations  of  conscience  will  be  best 
expressed  by  their  representations  on  the  board.  The 
first  has  been  sufficiently  explained.  For  the  second, 
we  need  a  line  back  of  the  list  of  active  powers  rep- 
resenting the  man,  the  person  who  is  really  the 
governing  power.  We  speak  of  governing  powers, 
but  we  mean  by  it  only  the  powers  that  ought  to 
govern.  In  the  last  resort  it  is  the  man  himself 
who  decides  and  governs,  and  who  is  to  be  considered 
apart  from  all  influences  that  can  be  brought  to  bear 
upon  him.  We  may  identify  him  with  the  will  or 
the  will  with  him,  but  it  is  not  the  will  that  decides, — 
it  is  the  man  who  has  the  will ;  and  we  wish  to  know 
what  the  influences  are  that  are  brought  to  bear  upon 
him  when  he  acts  morally  in  making  a  choice,  since 
it  is  only  in  making  a  choice  and  carrying  it  out 
that  he  does  act  morally.  In  order  to  do  this  we  will 
suppose  a  choice  is  to  be  made  between  the  desire 
of  power  and  moral  love,  and  represent  the  influ- 
ence of  each  by  a  line  drawn  from  it  to  the  man,  one 
drawing  him  up  and  the  other  down.  Then  con- 
science, if  it  is  to  have,  like  the  rest,  its  object  before 
it,  must  be  represented  as  behind  the  man,  and  its 
office  will  be  to  prompt  him  to  choose  to  be  influ- 


THE  PLACE   OF  CONSCIENCE.  107 

enced  by  moral  love,  and  forbid  him  to  be  influenced 
by  ambition. 

If  this  view  of  the  place  of  conscience  be  accepted, 
it  will  change  the  whole  aspect  of  the  moral  prob- 
lem. It  being  conceded  that  all  moral  action  is  in 
choice,  and  in  carrying  out  choices,  it  will  be  seen 
that,  according  to  this,  the  only  object  of  choice  there 
can  be,  must  be  from  some  one  of  the  active  prin- 
ciples represented  as  in  front  of  the  man,  each  of 
these  presenting  some  form  of  a  good  either  to  him- 
self or  to  others.  It  will  follow  from  this  that 
conscience  never  furnishes  the  primary  motive  for 
action,  and  never  acts  at  all  except  for  the  enforce- 
ment of  some  motives  not  furnished  by  itself.  If 
there  were  not  a  good  beyond  its  own  sphere  fur- 
nishing the  occasion  for  its  action,  it  could  never  act. 
And  not  only  must  there  be  a  ground  for  action  aside 
from  conscience,  but  it  must  be  so  far  rational  that 
it  would  suffice  for  itself,  or  conscience  could  have  no 
basis  for  action.  In  other  words,  according  to  this 
view,  conscience  does  not  furnish  the  grounds  of 
choice,  but  requires  of  us,  in  a  peculiar  manner,  and 
with  sanctions,  the  choice  of  ends  and  forms  of  good 
furnished  by  other  principles  of  action.  It  supersedes 
no  natural  principle  of  action,  and  it  restrains  none, 
except  it  be  by  acting  in  conjunction  with  one  that 
is  higher  than  it.  Thus  doing,  the  conscience  works 
in  harmony  with  reason,  which  must  always  require 
tlie  choice  of  the  higher  good,  and  also  with  each 
natural  principle  of  action  along  the  whole  line,  so 
far  as  it  abides  within  its  own  bounds. 


108       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

It  will  be  perceived  further,  that,  according  to  this 
view,  the  existence  of  moral  ideas,  and  so  of  con- 
science itself,  is  conditioned  on  a  sensibility,  and  on 
that  product  of  a  sensibility  which  we  call  a  good. 
Each  principle  of  action  in  the  upward  line  can 
furnish  a  motive  only  as  it  is  a  form  of  the  sensibil- 
ity, and  as  there  is,  from  its  normal  action,  some 
form  of  a  good  in  the  sensibility.  It  is  only  as  there 
is  such  a  good  from  the  action  of  these  principles 
that  the  idea  of  rights  or  of  obligation  can  arise,  — 
of  rights  as  belonging  to  ourselves,  of  obligations 
either'  as  due  from  others  to  us,  or  from  ourselves 
to  others. 

Certainly,  if  we  had  no  conception  of  a  good  either 
for  ourselves  or  others,  we  could  have  no  concep- 
tion of  either  rights  or  of  obligation;  but  these  are 
primitive  ideas  given  by  the  moral  nature,  and  with- 
out them  the  action  of  conscience  would  be  impos- 
sible. And  what  has  just  been  said  of  rights  and 
of  obligation  in  their  relation  to  a  good,  will,  of 
course,  be  true  of  benevolence  and  of  justice.  With- 
out a  sensibility  through  which  there  might  be  en- 
joyment and  suffering,  natural  good  and  evil,  there 
could  plainly  be  no  benevolence  or  malignity,  no 
justice  or  injustice ;  and  thus,  without  a  sensibility 
and  the  idea  of  a  good  from  that,  as  prior  in  the 
order  of  nature,  there  could  be  no  moral  ideas.  We 
see,  then,  how  impossible  it  is  that  any  system  of 
momls  should  be  based  on  an  intuition  purely  intel- 
lectual, unless  we  call  that  so  which  has  for  its 
underlying  ground  a  good  which  is  the  product  of 


THE  PLACE   OF   CONSCIENCE.  109 

a  sensibility,  and  which  is  recognized  through  a  sen- 
sibility as  having  value  in  itself.  As  I  have  said 
in  "  The  Law  of  Love,"  "  When  it  is  said,  as  it  has 
been,  to  be  an  a  priori  law  that  benevolence  is  right 
and  malice  is  wrong,  it  cannot  be  so  a  jpricn^i  and 
transcendental  as  to  exist  till  there  is  a  knowledge 
of  what  benevolence  and  malice  are,  and  so  of  that 
good  and  evil  [natural  good  and  evil]  without  which 
neither  of  them  could  be." 

But  to  this  view  there  are  objections.  One  is 
drawn  from  the  consciousness  we  have  of  acting  di- 
rectly from  a  sense  of  duty,  with  no  reference  to  any- 
thing else.  That  we  have  such  consciousness  I  agree. 
The  voice  of  conscience  is  imperative,  and  may  oc- 
cupy our  whole  thought.  So  may  that  part  of  a  tree 
which  is  above  the  ground  occupy  our  whole  thought 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  roots  from  which  the  tree 
grew,  and  whence  its  sap  is  derived.  Certainly, 
among  the  motives  which  must  be  involved  in  an  act 
of  choice  by  a  being  so  complex  as  man,  a  sense  of 
duty  may  determine  wdiat  the  choice  shall  be,  the 
mind  may  be  fixed  upon  that  alone,  and  man  may 
feel  a  sense  of  dignity  when  that  is  so.  There  is  a 
certain  grandeur  in  quoting  the  passage.  Fiat  justitia, 
ruat  ccelum,  —  "  Let  justice  be  done,  though  the 
heavens  fall."  That  passage  I  would  quote  with  as 
much  emphasis  as  any  one,  but  I  would  not  have 
such  a  conception  of  justice  as  would  make  it  of  no 
consequence  wiiether  the  heavens  should  fall  or  not. 
In  the  same  way  it  is  said  that  children  have  a  sense 
of  rights   and   of  duties   before  they  can   estimate 


110       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

consequences.  Yes,  like  other  parts  of  our  nature, 
the  conscience  acts  spontaneously  and  impulsively. 
Before  we  are  able  to  understand  the  reason  of  it, 
it  impels  us  like  an  instinct ;  but  when  we  come  to 
understand  it,  we  find  it  a  part  of  a  harmonious 
system,  every  part  of  which  was  intended  to  conspire 
for  the  good  of  the  whole. 

It  is  said,  too,  that  this  view  does  not  comport  well 
with  what  our  Saviour  said  of  self-denial,  and  suffer- 
ing, and  persecution,  and  losing  our  lives  for  his 
sake.  It  does  comport  with  it  perfectly,  and  is  the 
only  view  that  does.  For  what  does  he  say  ?  "  Blessed 
are  ye  when  men  shall  revile  you,  and  shall  say  all 
manner  of  evil  against  you  falsely  for  my  sake,  .  .  . 
for  great  is  your  reward  in  heaven."  "  Love  ye  your 
enemies,  and  do  good,  hoping  for  nothing  again,  and 
your  reward  shall  be  great."  What  a  pity  he  said 
this  last !  Again,  "  He  that  loveth  his  life  shall  lose 
it,  and  he  that  liateth  his  life  shall  keep  it  —  unto 
life  everlasting."  Even  he  himself,  for  the  joy  that 
was  set  before  him,  endured  the  cross.  Can  there 
really  be  anything  wrong  or  in  any  way  unworthy 
in  a  man's  intelligently  co-operating  with  God  for  his 
own  best  good  ?  If  there  were  time,  I  should  like  to 
speak  at  this  point  of  the  confusion  by  the  positivists 
of  a  regard  to  self-interest  with  selfishness,  and  of 
the  quixotism  of  their  professed  devotion  to  an 
abstraction,  which  they  call  humanity,  by  wliich  they 
outquixote  Don  Quixote  himself. 

But  would  not  this  view  lead  to  utilitarianism  ?  JSTot 
as  I  understand  the  term.     I  recoonize  the  distinction 


THE  PLACE   OF   CONSCIENCE.  Ill 

between  a  regard  to  duty  and  a  regard  to  utility.  I 
hold  to  obligation  and  its  binding  force  as  strongly 
as  anybody.  I  hold  to  a  moral  nature,  through  which 
obligation  is  immediately  and  necessarily  affirmed, 
but  I  hold  tliat  obligation  is  obligation  to  choose' ;  and 
because  I  hold  further  that  it  is  obligation  to  choose 
a  good  rather  than  an  abstract  quality  of  an  action, 
I  am  regarded  by  some  as  a  downright  utilitarian. 
Utility  is  a  good  thing  in  its  place,  but  that  place  is 
not  at  the  basis  of  a  moral  system.  I  would  choose  a 
good,  not  for  its  utility,  for  it  has  none.  It  is  the 
only  thing  I  know  of  that  neither  has  nor  can  have 
utility.  I  would  choose  it  for  its  own  sake,  and  also 
as  under  obligation  to  choose  it ;  and  this-  behest  of 
moral  law,  uttered  through  the  sense  of  obligation, 
may  and  should  become  a  motive  sufficient  to  lead 
me  to  choose  that  good  under  every  extremity.  Adopt- 
ing here  what  I  have  said  elsewhere,  "  It  is  one  thing 
to  say  that  the  formation  of  moral  ideas  and  the 
action  of  conscience  at  all  —  of  the  will  even  —  are 
conditioned  on  a  sensibility,  and  quite  another  to  say 
that  when  these  ideas  are  formed,  and  conscience 
utters  its  imperative  as  between  a  higher  and  a  lower 
principle  of  action,  conscience  is  not  to  be  obeyed  out 
of  regard  to  any  utility  there  may  be  supposed  to  be 
from  the  action  of  the  lower.  That  conscience  is  to 
be  obeyed  implicitly  I  assert,  and  always  have  as- 
serted, and  the  action  is  not  made  utilitarian  because 
conscience  sides  with  the  principles  that  would  give 
the  higher  good."  It  would  be  a  disturbing  element 
in  the  constitution,  and  an  anomaly  in  the  creation  of 
God.  if  it  did  not. 


112       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

But  this  subject  I  will  not  continue  further.  It 
requires  a  more  thorough  treatment  than  the  time 
permits.  It  might,  indeed,  have  been  better  if  I  had 
taken  but  one  subject.  I  should  at  least  have  avoided 
the  architectural  blunder  of  making  the  porch  larger 
than  the  house.  If,  however,  I  have  succeeded  in 
presenting  to  this  audience  clearly  and  fairly,  so 
that  its  bearings  are  understood,  the  question  of  the 
place  of  conscience,  it  is  all  I  could  hope  to  do. 
The  question  I  leave  with  you.  How  to  reconcile 
the  claims  of  the  sensibility  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
moral  nature  on  the  other,  pliilosophers  have  not 
been  agreed.  They  are  not  now.  Some  way  of 
reconciliation  there  must  be,  and  if  what  I  have  said 
has  thrown  but  one  gleam  of  light  upon  that  way,  I 
shall  be  satisfied. 


V. 

DEVELOPMENT:    ITS    NATURE;    AVHAT    IT 
CAN  DO   AND   WHAT   IT   CANNOT  DO. 

By  rev.  JAMES  McCOSH,  D.D.,  LL.D. 


DEVELOPMENT:    ITS    NATURE;    WHAT    IT 
CAN  DO  AND  WHAT  IT  CANNOT  DO. 

By  rev.  JAMES  McCOSH,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

THE    PRELUDE. 

WHEN  I  was  asked  a  few  weeks  ago  to  lecture 
in  Boston,  the  question  immediately  started 
up  in  my  mind :  What  can  have  induced  anybody  to 
invite  me  to  speak  in  a  city  where,  as  I  look  upon  it, 
every  man  is  fitted  by  heredity,  by  birth  and  educa- 
tion, to  be  a  lecturer  ?  After  puzzling  my  poor  brain 
for  a  time,  I  gave  up  the  question  as  unanswerable, 
resolving  meanwhile  to  embrace  the  opportunity  of 
meeting  so  enlightened  a  community.  Being  here,  I 
feel  that  I  should  conform  to  the  practice  of  the  place 
and  the  hour ;  and  so  I  begin  with  a  prelude. 

There  are  few  people  here  who  remember,  or  indeed 
ever  heard,  that  some  years  ago  I  delivered  in  Boston 
a  short  course  of  lectures  (afterwards  published)  on  the 
topics  which  lie  between  philosophy  and  theology. 
Not  claiming  to  be  a  prophet,  I  looked  at  the  causes 
then  in  operation,  and  ventured  to  draw  out  a  map  of 
the  road  which  a  certain  class  of  our  young  men  were 


116       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

taking.  I  described  Unitarianism,  so  full  of  life  and 
^  hope  an  age  ago,  as  dead  and  laid  out  for  decent 
burial.  Everybody  saw,  or  was  beginning  to  see,  that 
the  system  defended  by  Channing,  as  founded  on  the 
Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  jS'ew  Testament,  could  not 
stand  before  an  honest  interpretation  of  these  writings. 
Left  without  any  divine  authority  to  uphold  it,  the 
creed  was  like  the  icicles  we  see  on  the  roofs  of  our 
houses  at  this  season,  clear  but  cold,  not  drawing 
.   our  hearts  towards  it,  and  certain  to  melt  away  in 

^  the  heat  of  a  more  fervent  period.  But  I  intimated 
my  fear  that  those  left  without  any  revelation  from 
Heaven  to  stay  them  might  go  down  the  sliding  scale 
into  a  lower  depth. 

The  causes  operated,  and  the  anticipations  I 
sketched  have  so  far  been  realized.  Our  youth 
have  tried  to  live  in  a  certainly  wide  enough  region, 

-.f-  supplied  them  by  Herbert  Spencer  and  his  accom- 
plished disciple  and  expounder  in  this  country,  Mr. 
Fiske,  —  the  region  of  the  unknowable  to  which 
they  politely  consign  God  and  religion,  where  no 
one  can  see  them,  and  where  Professor  Huxley  has 
conveniently  set  up  for  them  "  worship  chiefly 
of  the  silent  sort,"  with  no  one  to  speak  and  no 
one  to  hear.  But  our  active  young  men  have  felt 
a  difficulty  in  living  in  a  vacuum  ;  and,  seeking  for 
so'mething  more  substantial,  they  fondly  expect  to 
find  air  and  food  in  materialism,  which  Professor 
Tyndall  assures  them  has  every  sort  of  promise  and 
potency. 

Meanwhile,  there  have  been  protests  against  this 


DEVELOPMENT:    ITS   NATURE.  117 

tendency,  and  persons  have  been  eagerly  clutching 
certain  weak  branches  to  stay  their  descent,  but 
which,  as  they  give  way,  will  only,  I  fear,  precipitate 
them  the  faster.  Mankind  have,  after  all,  a  deep 
underlying  belief  in  something  supernatural  which 
seems  to  be  pervading  and  surrounding  the  whole  of 
natural  operation.  Some  one  said  that  when  men  cease 
to  believe  in  God  they  begin  to  believe  in  ghosts ;  and 
there  are  numbers  who,  in  the  felt  want  of  anything 
better,  have  lent  a  favorable  ear  to  Spiritualists. 
Those  who  could  not  believe  in  Moses  and  the  proph- 
ets, in  Christ  and  his  apostles,  have  listened  eagerly 
to  audible  scribbling  on  concealed  slates,  which  show, 
by  their  imbecility,  that  the  spirits  which  return 
from  the  other  world  have  lost  there  the  high  ability 
which  some  of  them  possessed  in  this  world.  Those 
who  could  not  believe  that  God  sent  his  Son  into 
the  world  to  solve  the  enigma  of  the  universe,  and 
to  show  how  man,  the  sinner,  is  to  be  reconciled  to 
God,  the  holy  Governor,  and  how  he  is  to  be  delivered 
from  the  bonds  of  iniquity,  resolutely  maintain  that 
he  sends  spirits  to  untie  the  ropes  which  weak  or 
cunning  men  and  women  have  tied  around  them- 
selves. 

A  much  nobler  outlet  has  been  opened  for  this 
craving  after  the  divine  and  the  supernatural.  The 
beautiful  dreams  of  Emerson  have  been  made  to 
irradiate  and  gild  a  mysticism  which  has  been 
brought  from  the  East  and  supposed  to  be  the  Light 
of  Asia,  and  an  ideal  philosophy  which  has  come 
with  other  emigrants  from  Germany,  —  where  I  know 


K 


118       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

it  is  in  danger  of  being  starved;  and  many  have 
resorted  to  this  castle  in  the  air.  The  Concord  School, 
which  is  an  annex  of  literary  Boston,  has  just  been 
strengthened  by  the  resort  thither  of  an  able  and  a 
most  estimable  man,  who  has  taken  up  Hegelianism 
after  it  had  run  and  ended  its  course  in  Germany. 
These  philosophers  open  to  us  glorious  views,  if  not 
into  heaven,  at  least  into  the  clouds,  gilded  by  the 
shining  sun.  I  do  rejoice  in  all  they  say  so  elo- 
quently of  the  infinities,  the  eternities,  the  morali- 
ties, and  the  idealities.  There  are  not  only  beauty 
and  elevation,  there  is  also  a  truth  in  all  these  sen- 
timents. But  my  rational  nature  requires  me  to 
know  on  what  I  am  to  ground  my  belief,  and  how 
I  am  to  separate  between  the  sober  truth  and  the 
associated  extravagances.  This  I  can  do  only  by 
carefully  observing  the  laws  of  the  mind,  after 
the  manner  of  the  true  American  and  Scottish  phi- 
losophy, or  by  following  the  revelation  of  God  in  his 
Word. 

Meanwhile,  notwithstanding  these  side  eddies,  the 
deeper  current  is  moving  on.  First,  there  is  a  doc- 
trine of  relativity,  with  which  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer 
and  Mr.  Fiske  start.  According  to  this  philosophy,  we 
know  nothing  of  things,  which  may  or  may  not  have 
a  reality ;  all  that  we  have  are  simply  relations 
I  connecting  unknown  things,  —  a  bridge  with  nothing 
^  to  support  it  on  either  side.  This  has  prepared  the 
way  for  what  we  used  to  call  Nescience  and  Nihilism, 
but  which  is  now  designated  Agnosticism,  which  in- 
sists that  nothing  can  be  known.     Bi;t  it  is  proyer- 


DEVELOPMENT:    ITS   NATURE.  119 

bial  that  nature  is  stronger  than  speculative  theories, 
and  will  return  though  repelled  with  a  pitchfork. 
Its  very  advocates,  though  denying  that  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  mind  or  matter,  practically  believe  in  such 
things  as  pleasures  and  pains,  as  money  and  position 
in  society.  What  they  regard  as  unknowable  are  S/ 
simply  God  and  good,  immortality  and  a  judgment 
day.  As  the  issue  of  this  discussion,  there  are  num- 
bers of  our  young  men  who  are  unable,  or  at  least 
affect  to  be  unable,  to  determine  anything  about  di- 
vine or  spiritual  or  even  moral  truths,  and  care  about 
nothing  more  than  catching  the  enjoyments  of  the 
hour.  But  meanwhile  there  is  a  higher  nature  within 
—  a  remnant  and  indication  of  their  divine  nature  — 
which  will  not  allow  them  to  rest  satisfied  in  their 
present  creed.  They  are  made  to  feel  that  they  have  /> 
stalks  from  which  the  fruit  has  been  pulled.  Crav- 
ing for  substantia?  food,  they  would  find  it  in  materi- 
alism, and  would  fain  fill  their  belly  with  the  husks 
which  the  swine  do  eat,  only  to  find  that  they  are  "  in  X 
want,"  with  their  hearts  turning  away  from  the  re- 
past with  nausea  and  disgust.  It  is  in  this  state  of 
things  that  we  find  pessimism  propagated,  and  ac- 
cepted by  some  as  their  only  refuge. 

I  am  more  hopeful  of  this  hopeless  state  of  things 
than  of  that  self-satisfied,  self-righteous  one  that 
went  before.  The  ball  has  reached  its  lowest  point 
and  struck  against  impenetrable  adamant ;  and  it  is  / 
ready  for  a  rebound.  The  time  for  reaction  has  come,  i^ 
We  are  at  the  darkest  hour;  I  am  looking  for  the 
sun  to  rise.     We  may  now  sow  as  they  did  in  an- 


>^ 


120       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

cient  Egypt,  for  the  waters  are  receding,  leaving  a 
soil  ready  to  nourish  what  is  cast  into  it.  I  am  this 
day  to  endeavor  to  put  out  of  the  way  an  obstacle 
which  is  hindering  many  from  accepting  the  truth. 
That  obstacle  is  Development,  which  is  cherished  by 
some  and  repelled  by  others,  as  supposed  to  be  capa- 
ble of  carrying  on  nature  without  the  need  of  God. 


4 


THE  LECTURE. 

There  is  a  perpetual  reference  in  the  present  day 
to  Evolution,  or  Development.  There  is  an  equally 
rj^  persistent  avoidance  of  any  explanation  of  its  nature. 
Instances  of  it  are  given,  and  inferences,  legitimate 
and  illegitimate,  are  drawn ;  but  there  is  scarcely  an 
attempt  made  to  specify  what  is  involved  in  it. 

The  phrase  is  used  to  cover  all  sorts  of  things, 
clean  and  unclean.  Scientific  men  discourse  pro- 
foundly of  the  evolution  of  plants  and  animals,  of  in- 
dividuals and  of  species,  of  genera  and  orders,  from 
the  monad,  up  to  man.  But  we  hear  also  of  the  de- 
"^  '  velopment  of  the  resources  of  a  country,  of  its  wealth, 
its  mines,  its  gold  and  silver ;  its  crops  and  corn,  its 
wheat  and  fruits  ;  of  its  sheep  and  cattle  and  horses ; 
of  its  industry,  its  trade  and  commerce ;  of  its  cities, 
their  streets,  houses,  and  harbors ;  of  its  education,  its 
colleges  and  schools.  They  give  you  histories  of  the 
development  of  the  sciences,  of  astronomy,  chemistry, 
and  geology;  of  the  fine  arts,  as  painting,  sculp- 
ture, and  architecture ;  and  of  the  useful  arts,  as  mar 
sonry,  carpentry,  and  engine-making.     They  talk,  too, 


DEVELOPMENT:  ITS  NATURE.        121 

of  the  evolution  of  things  from  a  simpler  to  a  more 
complete  form,  —  of  pottery,  of  wax-work,  of  metal- 
work,  of  vases,  of  dinner-sets  and  teacups.  It  must 
surely  be  a  comprehensive  phrase,  or,  quite  as  possibly, 
a  loose  and  ambiguous  one,  which  embraces  all  these 
things  and  a  thousand  more. 

Just  because  of  its  capacity,  it  is  apt  to  take  up 
and  carry  with  it  all  sorts  of  incongruous  wares.  In 
these  circumstances,  when  any  one  is  talking  of  de- 
velopment, for  or  against  it,  it  is  necessary  to  insist 
on  his  telling  us  precisely  what  he  means  by  it.  "  I 
am  sick,"  says  the  man  of  common  sense,  who  is  not 
to  be  taken  in  by  high-sounding  phrases,  "of  this 
pretentious  development.  I  prefer  the  old  way  of 
speaking,  when  it  was  believed  that  all  things  came 
from  God."  But  I  ask  this  man  of  uncommon  sense 
whether  he  is  prepared  to  affirm  that  he  was  not  de- 
veloped from  his  good  father  and  mother;  whether 
he,  the  man  of  forty,  has  not  grown  out  of  that  boy 
whom  he  remembers  going  to  school  at  the  age  of 
six.  "  But  I  am  a  religious  man,"  he  tells  us,  "  and  be- 
lieve that  God  and  not  development  guides  this  uni- 
verse." I  ask  him  more  pertinently  whether  God 
may  not  have  made  him  grow  by  development,  and 
whether  this  same  God  has  not  evolved  the  Christian 
from  the  Jewish  faith,  and  the  Jewish  from  the  patri- 
archal. When  we  lay  down  for  ourselves  and  abide 
by  tlie  principle  that  in  the  discussion  we  explain 
beforehand  what  we  mean,  we  are  in  the  better  posi- 
tion to  require  the  same  on  the  part  of  our  opponent, 
and  to  insist  on  knowing  what  he  means  by  the  eve- 


A 


-h 


122       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

lution  which  he  is  defending:  an  evolution  out  of 
nothing;  an  evolution  without  a  God  to  set  it  a 
going  or  to  guide  it,  an  evolution  of  life  from  the 
lifeless,  of  mind  from  the  mindless,  of  man  from 
the  monkey,  of  the  monkey  from  the  mollusk,  of 
the  mollusk  from  the  monad,  and  all  from  senseless 
molecules  ? 

Development  is  evidently  not  a  simple  power  in 
nature,  like  mechanical  force  or  chemical  affinity  or 
gravitation.  It  is  clear  that  there  is  a  vast,  an  in- 
calculable number  and  variety  of  agencies  in  the 
process,  whether  it  be  the  development  of  the  plant 
from  its  seed,  of  the  bird  from  the  egg,  of  the  horse 
from  its  dam,  of  the  threshing-machine  from  the  flail, 
of  the  reaping-machine  from  the  reaping-hook,  of 
our  present  kitchen  utensils  from  those  used  by  our 
grandmother.  The  question  presses :  Is  there  any 
unity  in  the  "  thousand  and  one  "  things  that  form 
the  process  ?  I  believe  that  there  is.  It  is  worth 
inquiring  what  it  is,  when  it  will  be  found  to  settle 
for  us  what  truth  there  is,  and  what  error  there  is, 
in  the  common  expositions,  that  is,  developments  of 
development. 

Development  is  essentially  a  combination  of  causes 
working  towards  a  particular  end.  I  call  it  an  or- 
ganized causation  for  ends,  a  corporation  of  causes 
for  mutual  action.  At  this  point  I  am  greatly 
tempted  to  enlarge  and  dwell  on  the  subject  of  causa- 
tion. I  am  not  singular  in  holding  that,  after  all 
these  discussions  about  the  conservation  of  energy, 
we  scarcely  know  what  causation  is.     Mr.  MUl  has 


DEVELOPMENT:  ITS  NATURE.        123 

shown  successfully,  as  I  think,  that  in  all  causes  there 
are  always  two  or  more  agents.  "  The  statement  of 
the  cause,"  he  says,  "is  incomplete  unless  in  some 
shape  or  other  we  introduce  all  the  conditions.  A 
man  takes  mercury,  goes  out  of  doors  and  catches 
cold.  We  say,  perhaps,  that  the  cause  of  his  taking 
cold  was  exposure  to  the  air.  It  is  clear,  however, 
that  his  having  taken  mercury  may  have  been  a 
necessary  condition  of  his  catching  cold ;  and  though 
it  might  consist  with  usage  to  say  that  the  cause  of 
his  attack  was  exposure  to  air,  to  be  accurate  we 
ought  to  say  that  the  cause  was  exposure  to  air  while 
under  the  effect  of  mercury.  [Logic,  III.  5.]  The 
true  cause  comprises  both  the  mercury  and  the  state 
of  the  body.  It  is  always  dual  or  plural.  I  have 
shown  that  it  is  the  same  with  the  effect.  [Divine 
Government,  III.]  The  true  effect  consists  in  the 
mercury  changed  and  in  the  body  changed ;  the  mer- 
cury is  absorbed  into  the  frame  and  the  body  dies. 
The  true  physical  cause  always  consists  of  two  or 
more  bodies  in  a  particular  state,  and  the  effect  of 
the  same  body  in  a  different  state.  A  ball  in  motion 
strikes  a  ball  at  rest.  It  is  not  correct  to  say  that 
the  one  ball  is  the  cause  of  the  other  ball  moving. 
The  true  cause  is  made  up  of  both  balls,  the  one  in 
motion  striking  the  ball  at  rest,  and  the  effect  on  the 
one  ball  moved  and  the  other  stayed.  A  cold  current 
blows  on  my  body ;  this  acts  as  a  cause,  and  the 
effect,  the  air  is  slightly  warmed  and  my  body  is 
made  colder.  So  in  every  case  of  physical  causa- 
tion :  the  effect  consists  of  the  agents  acting  as  the 


124       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 


V} 


t 


cause  in  a  new  state.  According  to  the  doctrine  of 
the  conservation  of  energy,  the  amount  of  energy, 
real  and  potential,  in  the  causes  and  effects  is  always 
one  and  the  same." 

But  I  feel  tha't  I  must  restrain  myself  from  wan- 
dering in  a  field  where  dykes  and  roads  have  not  yet 
been  made.  I  take  up  the  subject  only  so  far  as  it 
concerns  my  present  purpose,  that  is,  the  relation  of 
development  to  causation.  Perhaps  it  might  be  said 
in  a  loose  way  that  all  causation  is  development.  It 
consists  in  effects  coming  out  of  causes.  All  that  I 
need  to  insist  on  is,  that  all  development  is  a  certain 
kind  of  causation. 

N"ow,  it  has  been  admitted  for  ages  that  causation 
works  through  all  nature ;  not  only  divine  causation 
the  source  of  the  whole,  but  physical  causation :  that 
is,  the  ordinary  occurrences  of  nature  are  all  pro- 
duced by  agents  working  causally;  in  other  words, 
fire  burns,  light  shines,  and  the  earth  spins  round  its 
axis  and  rotates  round  the  sun,  and  the  consequence 
is  that  we  have  heat  and  lisjht  and  the  beneficent 
seasons.  Men  of  enlarged  minds  do  now  see  and 
acknowledge  that  in  the  doctrine  of  causation,  in  the 
doctrine  of  God  acting  everywhere  through  second 
causes,  there  is  nothing  irreligious.  On  the  contrary, 
the  circumstance  that  God  proceeds  according  to 
laws  is  evidently,  for  the  benefit  of  man,  who  can 
thus  from  the  past  anticipate  the  future  and  prepare 
himself  for  it.  On  the  same  principle  I  hold  that 
there  is  nothing  irreligious  in  development,  which  is 
just  a  form  of  causation.     It  was  my  privilege  in  my 


DEVELOPMENT:    ITS   NATURE.  125 

earliest  work  to  justify  God's  method  of  procedure 
by,  natural  law.  I  reckon  it  a  like  privilege  in  my 
declining  life  to  defend  God's  mode  of  action  by  de- 
velopment, by  bringing  the  present  out  of  the  past. 
Only,  it  must  be  held  resolutely,  that  as  the  forces  of 
nature  are  exhibitions  of  the  power  of  God,  and  as 
the  laws  of  nature  are  the  laws  of  his  government, 
so  development  is  one  of  the  methods  by  which  God 
unfolds  his  plans  from  age  to  age. 

For  my  purpose  it  is  not  necessary  that  I  should 
settle  what  are  the  original  constituents  of  the  uni- 
verse. Some  suppose  these  to  be  atoms,  some  prefer 
representing  them  as  centres  of  force,  some  will  only  A 
allow  them  to  be  centres  of  motion.  I  am  inclined 
to  regard  them  as  atoms,  with  their  forces  or  prop- 
erties ;  perhaps  we  might  expediently  call  them 
molecules,  without  defining  what  they  are.  Let  us 
suppose  that  there  are  millions  of  millions  of  them 
working  in  the  knowable  world.  As  they  operate 
they  co-operate  and  combine.  As  they  act  they 
might,  if  left  to  themselves,  work  evil  quite  as  easily 
and  naturally  as  good,  and  the  molecules  might  have 
been  formed  into  destructive  machines  and  pestifer- 
ous creatures :  into  flaming  meteors  with  burning 
worlds  ;  into  mosquitoes,  gnats,  and  serpents,  devour- 
ing each  other  and  arresting  all  forms  of  beauty  and 
beneficence,  and  yet'  incapable  of  dying.  But  instead 
of  this,  these  million  agencies  combine  to  accomplish 
good  and  benign  ends,  so  as  to  show  that  there 
has  been  a  m.ind  disposing  them  and  a  power  guid- 
ing them.      Let  us  observe  some  of  the  beneficent 


126       CHKIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

issues,  and  we  will  soon  come  among  these  to  devel- 
opment. 

A.  The  combination  of  molecules  acting  as  causes 
has  produced  general  laws  and  beneficent  order :  in  the 
seasons,  in  the  growth  of  the  plant,  —  first  the  blade, 
then. the  ear,  then  the  full  corn  in  the  ear;  in  the 
animal,  enjoying  its  season  and  handing  down  its 
life  to  a  new  generation.  All  this  is  not  the  action 
of  simple  properties  of  matter  acting  fortuitously 
or  fatally;  it  is.  the  result  of  the  adjustment  of 
numerous  properties  of  matter,  mechanical,  gravi- 
tating, chemical,  electric,  all  conspiring  towards  an 
end. 

2.  The  combination  produces  special  ends,  such  as 
those  unfolded  by  Paley  and  other  writers  on  natu- 
ral theology.  Take  only  two  well-known  examples. 
There  is  the  eye.  What  a  combination  of  indepen- 
dent agencies  before  we  can  see  the  smile  on  that 
friend's  face  !  There  are  vibrations  coming  from  the 
sun  ninety  million  miles  away ;  these  have  passed  at 
various  rates  through  an  ether ;  they  touch  and  are 
reflected  from  the  countenance ;  some  of  them  reach 
the  cornea  of  an  optical  instrument  called  the  eye ; 
-they  go  through  an  aqueous  humor,  thence  through 
the  gateway  of  the  iris  into  the  crystalline  lens ;  they 
are  there  refracted  and  pass  through  the  vitreous 
humor  to  the  retina,  where  they  impact  on  thou- 
sands of  rods  and  cones  and  are  sent  on  to  the  optic 
nerve  and  the  brain ;  and  we  now  see  the  smiles  on 
our  mother's  face.  Let  any  one  of  these  be  absent 
or  fail,  and  nature  would  remain  forever  in  darkness. 


WHAT  DEVELOPMENT   CAN  DO.  127 

Take  the  ear.  A  sister  utters  a  word,  a  vibration 
is  started,  it  reaches  our  ear,  is  collected  by  the  outer 
ear  and  knocks  on  the  tympanum,  is  propagated  into  s^ 
the  middle  ear,  where  it  sets  in  motion  the  hammer 
and  the  anvil  and  the  stirrup,  thence  into  the  inner 
ear,  where  it  vibrates  through  a  liquid,  affects  the 
thousand  and  more  organs  of  Corti,  is  sent  round  the 
semicircular  canals  into  the  cochlea,  and  on  through 
the  auditory  nerve  into  the  brain;  the  silence  is 
broken,  and  we  are  cheered  by  a  voice  of  love. 

But  3,  and  this  more  to  my  purpose,  there  is  a 
combination,  to  produce  evolution.  The  present  is 
evolved  out  of  the  past  and  will  develop  into  the 
future,  all  under  a  divine  arrangement.  The  present 
is  the  fruit  of  the  past,  and  contains  the  seed  of  the 
future.  The  configuration  of  the  earth,  its  hills  and 
dales,  its  rivers  and  seas,  which  determine  the  abodes  w 
and  industries  of  men  and  the  bounds  of  their  habi- 
tation, have  been  produced  by  agencies  which  have 
been  working  for  thousands  or  millions  of  years. 
The  plants  now  on  the  earth  are  the  descendants 
of  those  created  by  God,  and  the  ancestors  of  those 
that  are  to  appear  in  the  coming  ages.  There  is 
through  all  times,  as  in  the  year,  a  succession  of 
seasons :  sowing  and  reaping,  sowing  in  order  to  reap, 
and  reaping  what  has  been  sown,  in  order  to  its  being 
sown  again.  This  gives  a  continuousness,  a  consist- 
ency, to  nature,  amidst  all  the  mutations  of  time. 
There  is  not  only  a  contemporaneous  order  in  nature, 
there  is  a  successive  order.  The  beginning  leads  to 
the  end,  and  the  end  is  the  issue  of  the  beginning. 


128       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

This  grass  and  grain  and  these  forests  that  cover 
w  the  ground  have  seed  in  them  which  will  continue 
'  in  undefined  ages  to  adorn  and  enrich  the  ground. 
These  birds  that  sing  among  the  branches  and  these 
cattle  upon  a  thousand  hills  will  build  nests  and  rear 
young  to  furnish  nourishment  and  delight  to  our 
V"  children's  children  in  millennial  ages.  Every  natural- 
ist has  seen  a  purpose  gained  by  the  nutriment  laid 
up  in  the  seed  or  pod  to  feed  the  young  plant.  I  see 
a  higher  end  accomplished  by  the  mother  provided 
for  the  young  animal.  That  infant  is  not  cast  forth 
into  the  cold  world  unprotected,  ^-  it  has  a  mother's 
arms  to  protect  it  and  a  mother's  love  to  fondle  it. 
Development  is  not  an  irreligious  process ;  every  one 
who  has  been  reared  under  a  father's  care  and  a  moth- 
er's love  will  bless  God  for  it. 

In  this  development  there  are  usually  "periodical 
results  in  the  epochs  of  geology  and  of  history,  and 
especially  in  the  vegetable  and  animal  kingdoms. 
This  enables  us  so  far  to  anticipate  the  future  and  to 
accommodate  ourselves  to  it.  The  oak  develops  the 
acorn,  and  the  acorn  develops  the  oak.  The  bird  pro- 
duces the  ^gg,  and  out  of  the  ^gg  comes  the  future 
bird,  and  the  species  is  continued.  A  loving  pair  are 
joined  in  holy  marriage  union,  and  the  offspring  trans- 
mits the  inheritance  of  both. 

In  development  there  is  usually  progression.  At 
times  there  is  degeneracy,  chiefly  the  result  of  human 
sin,  as  we  see  in  the  degeneracy  of  the  Indians.  But 
as  a  whole  there  has  been  an  advance  in  our  earth 
from  age  to  age.     The  tendency  of  animal  life  is 


WHAT   DEVELOPMENT   CAN   DO.  129 

upon  the  whole,  upward,  —  from  all  fours  to  the  up- 
right position,  in  which  men  can  look  up  to  heaven. 
Agencies  have  been  set  a  going  to  produce  these  evi- 
dently intended  ends.  Causes  that  operated  ages  ago 
have  called  in  other  causes  to  co-operate  with  them, 
and  have  thereby  added  to  the  power  and  riches  of 
the  product.  The  geological  changes  have  made  our 
earth  tit  for  the  abode  of  man.  Human  beings  have 
taken  the  places  which  in  earlier  ages  were  handed 
over  to  wild  animals.  There  is  a  greater  amount  of 
food  produced  on  our  earth  than  at  any  earlier  stage. 
There  has  been,  as  the  ages  rolled  on,  a  greater  fulness 
of  sentient  life  and  a  larger  capacity  of  happiness. 
The  intellectual  powers  have  been  made  stronger  and 
firmer,  like  the  trunk  of  the  tree,  and  the  feelings,  like 
the  flowers,  have  taken  a  larger  expansion  and  a  richer 
color  by  culture. 

As  we  observe  all  this,  there  is  one  principle  we  are 
bound  to  carry  with  us ;  we  are  to  see  God  in  it  f> 
throughout  and  from  beginning  to  end.  Because  a 
rose,  a  dog,  or  a  horse  is  gendered  by  natural  causes,  it  is 
not  less  the  work  of  God.  Our  finest  roses  are  derived 
from  the  common  dog-rose ;  that  rose  in  its  simple 
beauty  by  the  roadside  is  the  divine  workmanship  ; 
but  so  is  the  richest  rose,  the  fullest  in  form  and  the 
gayest  in  color  in  our  gardens.  God,  who  rewards  us 
for  opening  our  eyes  upon  his  works,  gives  higher 
rewards  to  those  who  in  love  to  them  bestow  labor 
and  pains  upon  them.  Bogs,  it  is  said,  have  all  de- 
scended from  some  kind  of  wolf  This  does  not  make 
the  shepherd's  dog,  or  the  St.  Bernard  dog,  with  their 

9 


>s 


130       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

wondrous  instincts,  not  to  be  the  divine  workman- 
ship. Just  as  little  does  the  hypothesis  that  our 
living  horse  is  descended  from  the  Pleiohippus,  and 
this  from  the  Miohippus,  and  this  from  the  Eohippus, 
which  used  to  tread  with  its  five  toes  on  marshy 
ground,  prove  that  the  animal  we  ride  on,  so  useful 
and  so  graceful,  so  agile  and  so  docile,  is  not  the  crea- 
ture of  the  Creator  who  formed  it,  and  gave  to  it  its 
power  of  development. 

Not  only  is  development  when  properly  under- 
stood not  inconsistent  with  religion  ;  it  will  be  found 
that  the  combination  and  adaptation  in  it  clearly 
argue  design.  Sooner  or  later  there  will  be  written 
a  work  on  natural  theology  after  the  manner  of  Paley, 
showing  that  as  there  are  plan  and  purpose  in  the 
well-fitted  limbs  and  organs  of  the  bodily  frame 
of  animals,  so  there  is*  design  quite  as  evident  and  as 
wonderful  in  the  way  in  which  by  a  process  running 
through  ages  the  bones  and  muscles  have  been  adjusted 
to  each  other  to  produce  the  horse  we  drive  or  ride  on. 
There  is  a  manifest  and  a  wise  and  beneficent  end  in  the 
joints  of  our  frame  :  in  the  joint  backward  and  forward 
of  the  finger  by  which  we  grasp  objects ;  in  the  ball 
and  socket  joint  which  turns  all  round  at  the  shoulder ; 
but  there  is  quite  as  palpable  a  purpose  in  the  way 
in  which  these  joints  have  been  moulded  in  the  geo- 
logical ages  and  handed  down  by  heredity. 

I  therefore  see  design  in  development.  There  is 
an  obvious  end,  and  a  means  arranged  to  accomplish  it. 
We  see  purpose  evident  in  the  development  effected 
by  man.     The  farmer  uses  a  series  of  agencies  to  se- 


WHAT  DEVELOPMENT  CAN   DO.  131 

cure  his  end  :  he  ploughs,  he  harrows,  he  sows  seed, 
he  weeds,  and  in  the  end  he  gathers  in  a  crop.  The 
teacher  lays  out  a  plan  for  developing  the  faculties 
of  his  pupils  :  he  imparts  knowledge,  he  corrects,  he 
stimulates,  and  he  reaches  his  aim,  —  the  improve- 
ment of  these  faculties  and  a  fitness  for  the  duties  of 
life.  We  see  numerous  cases  in  which  there  is  need  ' 
of  co-operation  in  order  to  compass  an  end.  A  house 
is  built  and  furnished  because  a  number  of  people 
have  done  each  his  part :  the  mason,  the  carpenter,  W 
the  plumber,  the  slater,  the  glazier,  the  upholsterer.  A 
city  becomes  richer  because  the  merchants  have  been 
far-sighted,  and  the  manufacturers  expert,  and  the 
tradesmen  honest  and  industrious.  The  country  pros- 
pers because  the  master  and  the  servant,  the  school- 
master and  the  minister  of  religion,  are  all  and  each 
doing  their  part.  But  there  are  still  more  wonderful 
evidences  of  a  plan  and  a  purpose  in  the  succession 
of  the  seasons,  and  of  the  grass  and  grain  and  trees, 
and  in  the  living  creatures  advancing  in  fulness 
and  strength,  in  activity  and  beauty.  It  is  not  in 
the  single  object  or  operation  that  we  discover  such 
evidence  of  a  purpose  so  much  as  in  their  organiza- 
tion, and  orderly  succession  and  development.  De- 
velopment is  a  sort  of  corporation  in  which  each  part, 
like  the  citizen,  fulfils  its  office. 

But  while  development  can  do  much,  it  may  not 
be  able  to  do  everything.  There  is  a  tendency  among 
rash  and  rapid  thinkers  to  push  every  new  truth  to 
an  extreme.  I  am  so  old  as  to  remember  the  feeling 
produced  when  Sir  Humphry  Davy  made  and  pub- 


>< 


132       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

lislied  his  brilliant  discoveries.  There  were  sciolists  in 
our  schools  of  popular  science,  among  our  newspaper 
editors  and  lecturers,  who  made  electricity  explain 
everything,  even  life  and  mind  itself.  This  disposi- 
tion, never  encouraged  by  the  great  discoverer,  soon 
ran  its  course,  and  died  out  in  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence as  new  discoveries  were  made.  Development 
is  at  present  running  through  a  like  crisis.  The 
work  of  the  past  age  has  been  to  show  what  it  can 
do ;  that  of  the  coming  age  is  to  determine  precisely 
what  it  cannot  do.  Like  all  creature  action,  it  will 
be  found  to  have  very  stringent  limits.  We  may  fix 
on  some  of  these. 

1.  Development  cannot  explain  the  origin  of  things. 
y     This  is  implied  in  its  nature  and  its  very  name.     It 

is  a  procession  out  from  something  which  has  gone 
before.  It  implies  a  set  of  arranged  substances  which 
seems  to  imply  a  creator  and  organizer. 

2.  It  cannot  account  for  the  collocations,  as  Dr. 
Chalmers,  followed  by  Mr.  Mill,  calls  them,  or,  as  I 
designate  them,  adaptations  necessary  to  carry  on  the 
operations  of  the  world  beneficently.  A  train  with- 
out a  hand  to  put  it  on  the  right  track  and  to  guide 
it  might  work  only  destructively. 

3.  It  cannot  account  for  the  law,  the  order,  the  be- 
neficence that  pervade  nature. 

4.  There  are  products  whicli  cannot  be  developed 
from  the  original  elements  of  nature.  I  have  declined 
to  dogmatize  as  to  what  these  are,  atoms  or  centres 
of  force  or  motion.     I  call  them  molecules.     These 

nJ   atoms  or  centres  cannot  give  what  they  have  not  got. 


WHAT   DEVELOPMENT   CANNOT   DO.  133 

If  heredity  has  a  gift  committed  to  it,  it  may  trans- 
mit it  from  parent  to  offspring,  and  from  one  generation 
to  another.  I  have  shown  at  an  earlier  stage  of  my 
lecture  that  in  pliysical  causation  the  effect  is  merely 
a  changed  state  of  the  agents  acting  as  the  causes. 
There  is  no  power  in  the  effects  which  was  not  in  the 
causes.  If  a  new  power  appears  in  the  effects  it  must 
be  from  superadded  causes.  Let  us  look  at  the  things 
that  have  been  effected,  and  inquire  whether  they 
could  all  have  been  in  the  original  molecules. 

Was  there  life  in  the  original  molecule  ?     If  not,  X 
liow  did  it  come  in  when  the  first  plant  appeared  ? 
Was  there  sensation  in  the  original  molecule  ?     liX 
not,  how  did  it  come  in  when  the  first  animal  had  a 
feeling  of  pleasure  or  of  pain  ?     Was  there  mind  in  > 
the  first  molecule,  say  a  power  of  perceiving  an  ob- 
ject out  of  itself?     Was  there  consciousness  in  the 
first   molecule   or   monad,   a  consciousness   of  self  ? 
Was  there  a  power  of  comparing,  of  judging,  of  dis- 
cerning between  two  things,  of  noting  their  agree-'^ 
ments  or  differences  ?     Was  there  a  power  of  reason- 
ing, of  inferring   the   unseen  from  the  seen,  of  the   ^ 
future  from  the  past  ?     Were  there  emotions  in  these 
first  existences,  say  a  hope  of  continued  life  or  fear   '^ 
of  approaching  death  ?     Perhaps  they  had  some  ele- 
ments   of  morality   or  loving   attachments   to  each   ^ 
other,  or  a  sense  of  justice  in  keeping  their   own 
whirl  and  allowing  to  others  their  place  and  rights 
in  the  dance !     Had  they  will  at  the  beginning,  and 
a  power  of  choosing  between  pleasure  and  pain,  be- 
tween the  evil  and   the   good  ?     Perhaps   they   had     jk 
some  piety  and  paid  some  worship  to  God ! 


X 


134       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

It  is   needless  to  say  that  there  is  not  even  the 
shade  of  a  proof  of  there  being  any  such  capacities^ 
in  the  original  atom  or  force  centre.     If  so,  how  did 
they   come  in  ?     Take   one   human  capacity,  —  how 
did   consciousness  come  in?     Herbert   Spencer,   the 
mightiest  of  them,  would  have  us  believe  that  he  has 
answered  this  question,  and  yet  he  has  simply  avoided 
it.     In  his  "Psychology"  he  is  speaking  of  nerves 
for  hundreds  of  pages ;  he  shows  how  in  their  move- 
ments there  is  a  succession   of  a  certain  kind,  and 
adds  simply  that  "  there  must  arise  a  consciousness." 
This  is  all  he  says,  bringing  in  no  cause,  or  link,  or 
connection  (see  Part  IV.  1).     Thus  does  he  step  over 
the  gap,  —  a  practice  not  uncommon  with  this  giant, 
as  he  marches  on  with  his  seven-leagued  boots. 
e  .  How,  then,  did  these  things  come  in?     How  did 
t  things   without   sensation   come   to   have   sensation, 
things   without   instinct  to  have  instinct,  creatures 
without   memory  to   have  memory,  beings   without 
intelligence  to  have  intelligence,  and  mere  sentient 
existence  to  know  the  distinction  between  good  and 
•  evil  ?     I  am  sure  that   when   these   powers   appear 
there  is  something  not  previously  in  the  molecule. 
All  sober  thinkers  of  the  present  day  have  admitted 
/that  there  is  no  evidence  whatever  in  experience  or 
in  reason  to  show   that  matter  can  produce  mind, 
I  that  mechanical  action  can  gender  mental  action,  that 
/  chemical  action  can  manufacture  consciousness,  that 
I  electric  action  can  reason,  or  organic  rise  to  the  idea 
I  of  the  good  and  the  holy.     I  argue  that  we  must  caU 
V^n  a  power  above  the  atoms  to  produce  such  phenom- 

i 


WHAT  DEVELOPMENT   CANNOT  DO.  135 

ena.  I  may  admit  that  a  body  may  come  out  of  other 
bodies  by  the  operation  of  the  powers  with  which  they 
are  endowed ;  but  I  deny  that  a  sensible,  intelligent, 
moral-discerning  soul  can  proceed  from  the  molecules 
of  matter.  New  powers  have  undoubtedly  come  in 
when  consciousness  and  feeling  and  understanding 
and  will  begin  to  act.  They  may  come  in  accord- 
ing to  laws  not  yet  discovered,  but  they  are  the  laws 
of  the  Supreme  Lawgiver.  * 

An  attempt  may  be  made  to  avoid  the  force  of  this 
by  a  far-fetched  supposition.  It  may  be  urged  that/' 
there  has  been  a  latent  life  in  these  molecules;  a) 
consciousness,  an  intelligence,  a  conscience,  with  be^ 
nevolence  and  power  of  choice,  which  developed, 
some  in  thousands  and  some  in  millions  of  years  or 
ages.  It  may  be  allowed  that  this  is  a  thing  imagi- 
nable, but  there  is  not  the  slightest  proof  of  it.  Even 
if  I  discover  proof  of  it,  I  would  also  find  proof 
of  design  in  the  way  in  which  these  latent  powers 
have  come  forth  and  acted  from  age  to  age  in  organ- 
ized plants,  in  sentient  animals,  in  organized  man. 
Choose  your  horn.  If  all  these  endowments  were  in 
the  primary  molecules,  it  is  clear  that  they  must  have  Jr^ 
been  the  creation  of  intelligence,  and  their  appear- 
ance in  their  seasons  the  arrangement  of  intelligence. 
If  they  were  not,  there  must  have  been  a  subsequent 
creation,  or,  if  any  dislike  the  phrase,  a  forthputting 
of  divine  power. 

^  There  is  evidence  that  there  has  been  from  time 
to  time  a  special  action  of  God,  at  the  first  creation 
and  at  the  subsequent  appearance  of  new  powers. 


/ 


136       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

The  account  of  the  progressive  work  of  creation 
in  Genesis  is  in  accordance  with  geology.  This  has 
been  shown  satisfactorily  by  the  three  men  on  this 
continent  best  entitled  to  speak  on  the  scientific 
question,  —  Professor  Dana,  of  Yale,  Principal  Daw- 
son, of  Montreal,  and  Professor  Guyot,  of  Princeton. 
It  can  be  shown  that  it  is  equally  consistent  with 
development  as  revealed  by  recent  science.  I  believe 
that  in  the  beginning,  or  origin,  God  created  the 
heavens  and  gave  the  original  constituents  their 
potencies,  which  began  to  act  by  the  command  of 
God,  and  there  was  light.  But  neither  religion  nor 
reason  requires  me  to  believe  that  he  gave  to  these 
life,  or  sensation,  or  reason,  or  love.  I  believe  that 
when  these  were  added,  whether  by  law  or  without 
law,  it  was  according  to  the  will  and  by  the  power  of 
God.  There  were  days  or  epochs  in  the  same  pro- 
cedure, and  at  the  opening  of  each  was  a  special  act 
of  God.  The  earth  was  without  form  and  void. 
When  the  evolution  began,  there  was  first  the 
development  of  light ;  then  the  elevation  of  the  ex- 
panse of  heaven ;  thirdly,  there  was  the  separation  of 
land  and  water,  and  the  earth  was  ready  for  plants. 
On  the  fourth  day  the  sun  and  moon  appeared  as 
distinct  bodies,  all  in  accordance  with  the  theory  of 
Laplace.  On  the  fifth  day  animals  appeared,  the 
lower  creatures,  tannim  or  swarmers,  then  fishes  and 
fowls ;  on  the  sixth  day  the  higher  animals,  and,  as  the 
crown  of  the  whole,  man.  Man's  creation  must  \\^\q 
been  a  special  act,  and  is  so  represented  in  Scripture. 
When  man  appeared,  there  was  something  which  was 


WHAT   DEVELOPMENT   CANNOT   DO.  137 

not  there  before,  and  this  Godlike,  after  the  image  of 
God.  In  all  this,  Genesis  and  geology  are  in  thorough 
accordance.  There  are  two  accounts  of  the  creation 
of  man.  One  is  in  Chap.  i.  There  is  council  and 
decision.  "  Let  us  make  man  in  our  image."  This  y^ 
applies  to  his  soul  or  higher  nature.  The  other 
account  is  in  Chap.  ii.  7  :  "  And  the  Lord  God  formed 
man  of  the  dust  of  the  ground,  and  breathed  into  v 
his  nostrils  the  breath  of  life,  and  he  became  a  liv- 
ing soul."  This  is  man's  organic  body.  We  have 
a  supplement  to  this  in  Ps.  cxxxix.  15,  16 :  "  My 
substance  \yas  not  hid  from  thee  when  I  was  made 
in  secret  and  curiously  wrought  in  the  lowest  parts 
of  the  earth.  Thine  eyes  did  see  my  substance,  being 
yet  unperfect ;  and  in  thy  book  all  my  members  were 
written,  which  in  continuance  were  fashioned,  when 
as  yet  there  was  none  of  them."  This  passage  used  y 
to  be  quoted  by  Agassiz.  This  is  my  creed  as  to  '^ 
man's  bodily  organism.  I  so  far  understand  what  is 
said.  Man  is  made  of  the  earth.  There  is  a  curious 
preparatory  process  hinted  at,  a  process  and  a  pro- 
gression going  on  I  know  not  how  long ;  and  all  is 
the  work  of  God  and  written  in  God's  Book,  I 
understand  this ;  and  yet  I  do  not  understand  it. 
Socrates  said  of  the  philosophy  of  Heraclitus  that  ^ 
what  he  understood  was  so  good  that  he  was  sure  the 
rest  would  also  be  good  if  he  understood  it.  So  I 
say  of  this  passage.  I  so  far  understand  it,  and  get 
glorious  glimpses  of  a  divinely  ordained  process ;  and 
yet  I  do  not  understand  it,  for  it  carries  me  into  the 
secret  things  which  belon2  unto  the  Lord  our  God. 


/ 


138        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

I  affirm  with  confidence  that  there  is  not  in  the 
geological  or  biological  science  any  truth  even  ap- 
parently inconsistent  with  this  statement. 

All  my  thoughts  have  been  developed,  some  may 
think,  without  much  purpose  being  seen  in  the  de- 
velopment. As  there  are  speculators  in  our  day  who 
are  as  infallible  as  the  Pope,  and  savans  who  claim 
the  Divine  attribute  of  omniscience,  and  lecturers 
who  know  all  the  work  which  God  does  not  do  from 
the  beginning  unto  the  end,  I  must  remind  you,  ere  I 
close,  that  development  has  not  yet  given  to  men  all 
knowledge.  "We  know  in  part."  Yes,  we  know, 
but  we  know  in  part  only.  We  who  dwell  in  a  world 
"  where  day  and  night  alternate, "  we  who  go  every- 
where accompanied  by  our  own  shadow  —  a  shadow 
produced  by  our  dark  body,  but  produced  because 
there  is  light  —  cannot  expect  to  be  absolutely 
delivered  from  the  darkness.  Man's  faculties,  ex- 
quisitely adapted  to  the  sphere  in  which  he  moves, 
were  never  intended  to  enable  him  to  comprehend 
all  truth.  The  mind  is  in  this  respect  like  the  eye. 
The  eye  is  so  constituted  as  to  perceive  the  things 
within  a  certain  range ;  but  as  objects  are  removed 
farther  and  farther  from  us  they  become  more  indis- 
tinct, and  at  length  are  lost  sight  of  altogether.  It 
is  the  same  with  the  human  mind.  It  can  understand 
certain  subjects  and  to  a  certain  distance;  but  as 
they  reach  away  further  they  look  more  and  more 
confused,  and  at  length  they  disappear  from  the  view. 
And  if  the  human  spirit  attempts  to  mount  higher 


DEVELOPMENT:    ITS   NATURE.  139 

than  its  proper  elevation,  it  will  find  all  its  flight 
fruitless.  The  dove,  to  use  an  illustration  of  Kant's, 
may  mount  to  a  certain  elevation  in  the  heavens ;  "j/^ 
but  as  she  rises  the  air  becomes  lighter,  and  at  length 
she  finds  that  she  can  no  longer  float  upon  its  bosom, 
and  should  she  attempt  to  soar  higher  her  pinions 
flutter  in  emptiness  and  she  falters  and  falls.  So  it 
is  with  the  spirit  of  man.  It  can  wing  its  way  to  a 
certain  distance  into  the  expanse  above  it ;  but  there 
is  a  limit  which,  if  it  endeavors  to  pass,  it  will  find 
all  its  conceptions  void  and  its  ratiocinations  uncon- 
nected. 

Placed  as  we  are  in  the  centre  of  boundless  space, 
and  in  the  middle  of  eternal  ages,  we  can  see  only  a 
few  objects  immediately  around  us,  and  all  others 
fade  in  outline  as  they  are  removed  from  us  by  dis- 
tance, till  at  length  they  be  altogether  beyond  our 
vision.  And  this  remark  holds  true  not  only  of  the 
more  ignorant,  of  those  whose  eye  can  penetrate  the 
least  distance ;  it  is  true  also  of  the  learned ;  it  is, 
perhaps,  true  of  all  created  beings,  that  there  is  a 
bounding  sphere  of  darkness  surrounding  the  space 
rendered  clear  by  the  torch  of  science.  Nay,  it  almost 
looks  as  if  the  wider  the  boundaries  of  science  are 
pushed  and  the  greater  the  space  illuminated  by  it, 
the  greater  in  proportion  the  bounding  sphere  into 
which  no  rays  penetrate,  just  as  (to  use  a  very  old 
comparison),  when  we  strike  up  a  light  in  the  midst 
of  darkness,  in  proportion  as  the  light  becomes 
stronger  so  does  also  that  surface  become  black  and 
dark  which  is  rendered  visible. 


VL 

A    CALM    VIEW    OF    THE    TEMPER- 
ANCE   QUESTION. 

By  CHANCELLOR  HOWARD  CROSBY,  D.D.,  LL.D. 


VI. 

A    CALM    VIEW    OF    THE    TEMPER- 
ANCE   QUESTION. 

By  chancellor  HOWARD  CROSBY,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

'T^HE  object  of  temperance  societies  is  to  prevent 
-*-  drunkenness.  The  cardinal  principle  in  these 
societies  is  total  abstinence  from  all  that  can  intoxi- 
cate. That  total  abstinence,  if  adopted  by  all,  will 
prevent  drunkenness,  no  one  will  dispute.  The  object 
of  temperance  societies  would  be  gained. 

But  two  questions  arise,  after  contemplating  these 
propositions :  first,  will  this  plan  of  total  abstinence 
be  adopted  ?  and,  secondly,  ought  it  to  be  adopted  ? 
The  first  question  is  prudential ;  the  second  is  moral 

1.  The  Prudential  Question.  —  Will  the  plan  of 
total  abstinence  from  all  that  intoxicates  be  received 
by  men  in  general  ?  We  desire  to  use  in  all  measures 
of  reform  a  plan  that  is  practicable.  We  cannot  be 
satisfied  with  mere  testimony  to  a  theory  that  will 
be  unproductive  of  results.  Herein  reform  differs 
from  religion.  Eeligion  demands  adhesion  to  a  truth 
stamped  by  the  conscience,  even  though  that  truth 
find  no  other  adherent.     But  reform  lies  in  the  do- 


144       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

main  of  the  expedient.  It  seeks  to  make  society 
better,  and  if  it  cannot  raise  society  to  the  highest 
level,  it  will  raise  it  as  high,  as  it  can.  It  will  not 
prefer  to  let  society  wallow,  because  it  cannot  place 
it  in  an  ideal  Utopia.  The  most  religious  and  con- 
scientious man  will  be  glad  to  see  men  leave  off 
strife  and  discord,  even  if  they  do  not  act  from  the 
highest  motives,  or  attain  to  the  heights  of  a  genuine 
charity.  His  conscience  will  not  be  iujured  by  their 
improved  condition,  however  much  he  would  like  to 
see  them  still  more  enlightened.  It  is  an  important 
point  to  make  clear  to  the  mind  this  distinction 
between  the  conduct  of  reform  and  the  movement  of 
personal  religion,  for  confusion  here  has  led  to  much 
false  action.  A  common  argument  of  the  radical 
agitator  is,  that  his  conscience  cannot  stop  short  of 
total  abstinence  in  the  temperance  question,  and  on 
that  ground  he  will  not  have  any  afhhation  with  one 
who  seeks  to  subdue  the  intemperance  of  the  land 
by  any  other  method.  But  his  argument  is  a  com- 
plete non  sequitur.  His  conscience  concerns  his  own 
personal  habits.  In  the  matter  of  other  people's  habits 
he  is  simply  to  do  the  best  the  circumstances  allow. 
The  conscience  that  prescribes  his  personal  habits 
may  make  him  long  to  see  others  like  him,  and  may 
make  him  work  to  that  end,  but  it  cannot  rebuke 
him  if  that  end  is  not  attained,  but  only  an  approxi- 
mation is  gained ;  nay,  it  should  make  him  work  for 
the  approximation  with  all  zeal. 

Too  often  that  which  is  called  conscience  is  mere 
^^  obstinacy  of   opinion  and  personal  pride.     A  large 


THE  TEMPERANCE   QUESTION.  145 

part  of  the  fanaticism  that  history  records  has 
been  made  in  this  way.  Men  have  gone  to  the  stake 
as  martyrs,  or  sufferers  for  conscience'  sake,  when  the 
heresy  they  professed  never  went  deeper  than  their 
sentiment,  and  might  readily  have  been  altered  by 
a  free  judgment.  While  this  fact  does  not  justify 
their  persecutors,  or  palliate  their  guilt,  yet  it  cer- 
tainly detracts  from  the  merit  of  the  martyrdom. 
In  this  matter  of  arresting  the  progress  of  drunken- 
ness we  may  have  very  different  views  of  the  means 
to  be  used,  and  we  may  conscientiously  adhere  to 
our  own  plan  of  working  toward  the  end,  but  we 
connot  conscientiomli/  object  to  the  means  employed 
by  others  unless  they  contain  an  immorality.  Nay, 
more,  we  micst  conscientiously  wish  them  success. 

If  this  principle  of  sympathy  and  co-operation  on 
the  part  of  all  who  seek  the  abatement  of  intemper- 
ance were  once  established,  we  should  see  effects  that 
are  now  thwarted  by  the  divisions  and  mutual  hos- 
tility of  those  who  profess  to  have  the  same  end  in 
view.  One  of  the  reasons  for  this  confirmed  hostility 
of  the  total  abstinence  advocates  against  the  reform- 
ers who  do  not  adopt  that  principle  is  found  in  the 
power  of  a  false  usage.  I  refer  to  the  word  "  temper- 
ance." 

The  word  has  been  violently  wrested  from  its 
legitimate  meaning.  By  a  persistent  use  of  a  moder- 
ate word  for  radical  measures,  the  great  unthinking 
public,  so  far  as  they  are  seekers  for  the  common 
good,  have  been  led  to  see  in  these  radical  measures 
the  only  path  of  duty.     They  have  learned  to  con- 

10 


146       CHKIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

sider  all  that  was  opposed  to  the  party  called  by  the 
name  of  Temperance  as  inimical  to  temperance,  and 
so  have  enormously  swelled  the  radical  ranks  by 
their  unenlightened  adhesion.  The  label  has  been 
affixed  to  the  wrong  goods,  and  the  unsuspecting 
purchaser  has  not  noticed  the  fact.  So  potent  has 
been  this  deception,  that  I  undertake  to  say  that 
there  are  thousands  of  worthy  citizens  who  have  no 
other  idea  of  the  word  "temperance"  than  that 
it  means  the  total  abstinence  from  all  that  can  in- 
toxicate. With  such  we  have  to  begin  with  first 
principles.  We  have  to  show  them  that  the  Latin 
temperantia  signifies  the  moral  quality  of  moderation 
or  discreetness,  and  that  the  English  word  "  temper- 
ance," as  used  in  all  good  standard  English  works, 
means  precisely  the  same  thing.  We  have  to  show 
them  that  the  temperate  zone  does  not  mean  a  zone 
which  totally  abstains  from  cold  or  heat,  but  a 
zone  that  is  moderate  in  both;  that  a  temperate 
behavior  is  not  a  behavior  that  totally  abstains  from 
severity,  but  one  that  is  steady  and  reasonable  in  its 
course,  as  Cicero  says  (Fam.  12.  27) :  "  Est  autem  ita 
temperatis  moderatisque  moribus  ut  summa  severitas 
summa  cum  humanitate  jungatur."  And  while  quot- 
ing Cicero,  I  may  quote  his  definitions  of  temperance 
as  given  in  his  De  Einibus,  first,  "  Temperantia  est 
moderatio  cupiditatum  rationi  obediens  "  (2.  19.  60) ; 
and,  secondly,  "  Temperantia  est  quae,  in  rebus  aut 
expetendis  aut  fugiendis,  rationem  ut  sequamur 
monet"  (1.  14  47).  Now,  what  a  fearful  prostitution 
of  a  noble  word  is  seen  in  the  popular  use  of  the 


THE  TEMPERANCE   QUESTION.  147 

word  "  temperance  "  to-day !  And  this  prostitution 
is  a  work  wrought  within  the  last  fifty  years.  From 
its  high  position,  as  signifying  a  grand  moral  subjec- 
tion of  the  whole  man  to  the  sway  of  reason,  it  is 
degraded  to  the  maimed  and  mutilated  function 
of  representing  a  legalism  that  prohibits  man  from 
any  drink  that  can  intoxicate.  To  what  base  uses 
has  it  come  at  last !  This  false  use  of  a  word  has  had 
special  influence  upon  that  portion  of  the  unthinking 
public  who  rightly  reverence  the  Scriptures.  They 
see  that  temperance  is  put  in  the  list  of  Christian 
virtues,  and  as  temperance  now  means  total  absti- 
nence, what  can  they  do,  as  loyal  believers  in  the 
Scriptures,  but  sign  the  pledge ;  and,  furthermore, 
count  all  who  do  not  as  aliens  from  God's  truth? 
They  are  as  honest  and  as  enlightened  as  the  good 
Presbyterian  woman,  who  only  needed  to  see  the 
words  "general  assembly"  in  the  Bible  to  know 
she  was  right  and  everybody  else  wrong. 

Now  the  use  of  a  false  argument  always  reacts 
against  the  user,  and,  while  the  ignorant  and  semi- 
ignorant  multitude  will  be  deceived,  the  thinking 
classes  of  society  will  shun  a  cause  that  rests  on  mis- 
representation. The  word  "temperance,"  as  seized 
and  appropriated  by  radical  and  intemperate  souls,  is 
a  false  flag,  and,  as  a  false  flag,  will  disgust  and  alien- 
ate true  and  enlightened  souls.  Especially  will  this 
be  the  case  when  it  is  found  to  be  only  one  of  many 
false  lights  held  out  to  attract  th^  masses.  Another 
of  these  deceptions  (of  course  I  do  not  say  these  are 
wilful  deceptions   by  all  that  use  them,  I  am  only 


148       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

speaking  of  their  absolute  character),  —  another  of 
these  deceptions  is  the  circulated  theory  of  an  unfer- 
mented,  unintoxicating-wine.  There  is  not  a  chemist 
nor  a  classical  scholar  in  tlie  world  who  would  dare 
risk  his  reputation  on  the  assertion  that  there  was 
ever  an  unfermented  wine  in  common  use,  knowing 
well  that  must  preserved  from  fermentation  is  called 
wine  only  by  a  kind  of  courtesy  (as  the  lump  of 
unbaked  dough  might  be  called  "  bread "),  and  that 
this  could  in  the  nature  of  things  never  be  a  common 
drink.  Cato  (De  Ee  Eustica,  120)  shows  how  by 
a  very  careful  method  must  could  be  kept  for  a  whole 
year,  and  other  Eoman  writers  show  the  same ;  but 
who  can  pretend  that  these  writers  ever  looked  upon 
such  preserved  juice  as  wine,  when  their  whole  object 
is  to  show  how  it  can  be  kept  from  becoming  wine  ? 
Yet  with  no  other  foundation  tlian  this,  the  leaders 
of  the  total  abstinence  cause  have  published  their 
bull,  affirming  that  the  good  wines  of  antiquity 
were  unfermented,  in  utter  defiance  of  chemaistry, 
history,  and  common  sense.  Because  the  grape  juice 
could,  by  means  of  hermetically  sealed  vessels  un- 
der water,  be  kept  grape  juice,  therefore  the  com- 
mon wines  of  antiquity,  the  wine  of  which  writers 
speak  when  they  use  no  qualifying  phrase,  must 
have  been  unfermented.  This  is  the  logic  used 
by  these  infatuated  defenders  of  the  total  abstinence 
principle. 

A  third  deception  in  this  cause  is  the  twisting  of 
Scripture  to  its  advocacy.  No  unbiased  reader  can 
for  a  moment  doubt  that  wine  as  referred  to  in  the 


THE   TEMPERANCE   QUESTION.  149 

Bible  passim  is  an  intoxicating  drink,  and  that 
such  wine  was  drunk  by  our  Saviour  and  the  early 
Christians.  To  meet  this  fatal  blow  to  the  total  ab- 
stinence system  in  the  minds  of  those  who  take  the 
Bible  as  their  guide,  the  advocates  of  the  cause  have 
invented  a  theory  that  is  magnificent  in  its  daring. 
It  is  no  less  than  the  division  of  the  word  "  wine  "  by 
a  Solomonian  sword,  so  that  the  good  and  the  bad 
shall  each  have  a  piece  of  it.  Whenever  wine  is 
spoken  of  severely  in  Scripture,  then  it  is  fermented 
wine,  and  whenever  it  is  spoken  of  in  praise,  or  used 
by  our  Lord  and  his  apostles,  then  it  is  unfermented 
wine.  And,  if  you  ask  these  sages  wdiy  they  so 
divide  the  wine,  —  on  what  grounds  they  base  this 
theory,  —  they  bravely  answer  that  our  Saviour 
could  not  have  drunk  intoxicating  w^ine,  and  God's 
word  never  could  have  praised  such,  and,  therefore, 
their  theory.  They  start  with  the  begging  of  the 
whole  question,  and  then  on  this  thin  air  they  build 
their  castle. 

It  is  not  now  my  purpose  to  argue  with  these 
strange  logicians.  I  only  wish  to  put  this  Scripture- 
twisting  in  the  list  of  deceptive  methods  used  by  the 
representative  total  abstinence  reformers  to  promote 
their  cause.  I  could  add  in  this  item  the  false  use 
of  texts  and  the  suppression  of  parts  of  texts,  but  I 
leave  the  matter  here. 

The  three  elements  of  deception  entering  into  their 
cause  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  use  of  the  word  "  tem- 
perance" for  a  totally  different  thing,  the  fable  about 
unfermented  wine,  and  the  violent  wrestinfr  of  the 


150       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

Scriptures.  Now  I  unhesitatingly  affirm  that  a  cause 
having  such  falsehoods  as  its  main  supj)orts  can  never 
be  accepted  by  the  public.  Simple-minded  people 
may  be  gained  to  it,  but  the  thinking  people  will  be 
repelled.  It  is  true  that  some  may  adhere  to  it,  in 
spite  of  its  falsehood,  for  other  reasons ;  but  the  three 
great  untruths  that  are  flaunted  on  its  banners  will 
disgust  most  men  who  have  brains  and  use  them. 

A  second  reason  why  I  believe  the  plan  of  total 
abstinence  will  not  be  adopted  by  the  people  is  its 
unmanliness.  To  stop  the  use  of  anything  because 
of  its  abuse  is  an  expedient  for  the  weak  and  dis- 
eased, an  exceptional  plan  for  exceptional  cases ;  but 
to  assert  this  principle  among  men  in  general  would 
be  to  degrade  the  race  and  remove  all  the  incentives 
and  helps  to  moral  growth.  We  know  in  the  family 
how  mistaken  a  method  it  is  to  remove  everything 
the  child  should  not  play  with  out  of  its  reach.  The 
wise  parent  leaves  the  article  in  its  accustomed  place, 
and  teaches  the  child  its  rightful  use. 

The  other  plan  only  makes  the  child  more  and 
more  dependent  on  external  checks,  and  prevents  the 
growth  of  self-control.  The  same  reasoning  holds 
good  in  the  human  family  at  large.  We  are  to  de- 
velop self-control  as  much  as  possible.  A  true  civili- 
zation always  seeks  to  do  this.  A  barbarous  state 
of  society  requires  man  to  hide  everything  valuable 
in  places  unknown  to  others,  and  to  go  personally 
armed  to  secure  himself  against  attack.  But  a  civil- 
ized condition  reveals  a  very  different  state  of  things. 
Men  live  in  houses  full  of  valuables,  and  walk  the 


THE   TEMPERANCE   QUESTION.  151 

streets   unarmed   and   in   security.      Dependence   is 
placed  upon  the  common  self-control,  and  it  is  ac- 
knowledged to  be  a  far  higher  and  more  successful 
principle  for  the  conduct  of  human  life.     Of  course 
there  is  a  limit  to  this  practical  trusting  of  mankind, 
and  much  wisdom  is  needed  to  mark  this  limit  cor- 
rectly in  any  given  instance.     But  the  general  truth 
is  evident,  that  true  civilization  is  in  the  direction  of 
personal  self-control,  and  not  in  that  of  governmental 
prohibition.     We  expect  law  to  prohibit  crime ;  but 
we  look  to  law  only  to  regulate  matters  that  do  not 
involve  crime,  but  contain  risk  under  certain  condi- 
tions.    Now  the  selling  or  drinking  of  wine  is  cer- 
tainly not  a  crime,  and  any  legislation  which  prohibits 
it  is  open  to  the  charge  of  putting  it  in  a  wrong  cate- 
gory, and  abusing  the  popular  conscience.     A  pro- 
hibition for  certain  times  or  places  may  be  defended 
without  subjecting  the  act  to  this  false  imputation ; 
but  a  total  prohibition,  the  cardinal  doctrine  of  the 
total  abstinence  people,  at  once  brands  wine-drinking 
with  theft  and  violence.     Things  that  are  not  vicious 
in  themselves,  but  which  may  be  readily  abused  to 
vicious  ends,  certainly  need  legislative  regulation,  and 
such  regulation  is  a  help  to  self-control,  where  pro- 
hibition would  be  a  hindrance.     Eegulation  is  a  hint 
to  put  the  people  on  their  guard,  but  prohibition  is 
completely  taking  away  the  subject  from  the  people's 
notice.     Now  the  public  mind  revolts  at  being  treated 
in  this  childlike  way.     It  virtually  says :  "  Give  us 
certain  wise  rules  about  this  thing,  but  for  the  sake 
of  respectable  and  dignified  humanity  do  not  sweep 


152       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

it  away  from  the  earth."  Eemember  that  we  are  not 
arguing  now  on  the  merits  of  the  total  abstinence 
theory,  but  only  on  its  feasibility.  We  do  not  say 
that  it  is  a  wrong  principle.  We  only  say  that  peo- 
ple will  not  adopt  it,  and  we  are  showing  the  reasons 
why  they  will  not.  The  community  will  not  un- 
reasonably (as  they  think)  be  put  into  leading-strings 
and  kept  in  a  permanent  nursery,  and  that  too  by 
men  who  use  manifest  falsehoods  as  prominent  argu- 
ments for  their  position.  There  is  such  a  thing  as 
the  public  conscience,  and  people  will  draw  lines  of 
distinction  between  things  criminal  and  things  in- 
different. They  will  naturally,  therefore,  resist  any 
movement  that  tends  to  obliterate  these  distinctions, 
and  judge  of  it  as  the  action  of  a  tyrannic  opinion 
and  not  of  an  ethical  truth.  They  feel  that  their 
manhood  is  assailed,  and  if  this  assault  is  allowed  in 
this  form  they  may  be  exposed  to  other  assaults  in 
still  more  odious  forms.  Of  course,  it  is  easy  for  the 
radical  reformers  to  say  that  this  opposition  is  inter- 
ested, and  is  only  the  struggle  of  evil  against  those 
that  would  fetter  it ;  but  there  are  too  many  good, 
conscientious,  and  thoughtful  men  who  feel  all  this 
that  I  have  said,  for  this  allegation  to  be  maintained. 
We  cannot  consent  to  go  back  to  mediaeval  nonage, 
and  have  our  day's  allowance  doled  out  to  us  by  a 
few  who  arrogate  to  themselves  the  paternal  manage- 
ment of  the  world.  We  cannot  permit  the  system  of 
sumptuary  laws  to  take  the  place  of  an  enlightened 
common  sense.  We  cannot  forego  our  reason  on  the 
plea  that  the  world  is  in  danger.     Nay,  we  must  all 


THE   TEMPERANCE   QUESTION.  153 

the  more  assert  our  reason  against  a  false  expediency 
that  in  curing,  or  attempting  to  cure,  one  evil,  would 
create  a  hundred.  The  fact  that  there  is  a  great 
danger  is  the  veiy  fact  that  should  guard  us  from 
pursuing  any  false  way.  Great  dangers  must  be  met 
by  great  prudence,  not  by  lieadlong  impulse.  It 
looks  brave  to  shout  and  fall  pdl  mell  upon  the 
enemy,  but  it  is  wiser  to  set  our  batteries  in  sure 
plapes,  and  to  order  line  and  reserves  in  the  interests 
of  a  permanent  victory.  Too  many  of  our  reforms 
are  pushed  without  regard  to  the  character  of  the 
means,  the  end  being  insisted  on  as  justifying  all 
means.  The  temperance  reform  has  been  an  eminent 
example  of  this  heedlessness. 

And  here  I  put  the  third  reason  why  I  believe  tlie 
plan  of  total  abstinence  will  not  be  adopted  by  the  peo- 
ple, —  because  of  its  spirit  of  intimidation:  Of  course, 
this  is  not  inherent  to  the  cause,  but  it  has  been 
the  invariable  accompaniment  of  it  during  its  forty 
years'  curriculum.  And  we  now  have  to  deal  practi- 
cally with  historic  facts,  and  not  with  mere  abstract 
theories.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  cauge,  whether 
it  be  the  weakness  of  the  case  or  the  unfortunate 
choice  of  leaders  and  defenders,  the  total  abstinence 
propaganda  has  been  an  overbearing  and  tyrannical 
power.  It  has  used  a  violence  of  language  that  can 
admit  of  no  excuse.  It  has  condemned  every  one, 
however  faithful  in  all  moral  and  religious  duties, 
who  has  refused  to  enter  its  ranks.  It  has  con- 
founded all  ideas  of  right  and  wrong,  calumniously 
declaring  the  man  who  drinks  wine  moderately  is  as 


154       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

bad  as,  nay,  worse  than  the  drunkard ;  asserting  that 
all  drinks,  whether  vinous,  malt,  or  distilled,  are  alike 
poisonous ;  vilifying  those  who  teach  any  other  doc- 
trine by  calling  them  traitors  to  the  truth,  —  Judas 
Iscariots  betraying  the  Master,  —  and  exercising 
where  it  could  a  fearful  proscription  in  driving  good 
men  from  the  pulpits  of  the  land  because  they  would 
not  and  could  not  conscientiously  pronounce  their 
Shibboleth.  The  principal  printed  organs  of  this 
propaganda  have  been  full  of  these  fierce  onslaughts 
upon  the  character  of  respectable  men,  and  the  harsh 
and  cruel  judgments  spoken  of  have  been  carried  out 
with  the  spirit  of  the  Inquisition.  The  political  world 
has  lately  invented  a  word  for  this  way  of  settling 
a  disputed  question.  They  have  called  it  "  bulldoz- 
ing." It  "makes  peace  by  creating  a  desert.  It  pro- 
duces unanimity  by  shutting  the  mouths  of  the  other 
side.  The  world  is  apt  to  think  that  such  conduct 
indicates  a  cause  that  cannot  be  sustained  by  reason, 
and  the  reaction  is  likely  to  be  excessive.  It  is  ex- 
actly that  reaction  which  is  now  making  the  cause 
of  rum  ancl  ruin  more  successful  than  ever.  Men  in 
their  revolt  from  tyranny  rush  into  licentious  ex- 
tremes, and  however  honest  the  tyranny  may  have 
been  or"  however  true  the  cause  it  supported,  it  has 
only  itself  to  blame  for  the  harm  it  does.  A  man 
may  put  his  hand  on  the  safety-valve  and  exclaim, 
"  See  how  I  have  stopped  the  noisy  escape  of  the 
steam ! "  and  certainly  everything  looks  calm  and 
peaceful ;  but  a  few  minutes  afterward,  when  the  steam 
has  had  time  to  gather  its  strength,  our  hero  will  have 


THE   TEMPERANCE   QUESTION.  155 

a  different  cry.  A  little  success  here  and  there  by 
the  total  abstinence  crusade  may  impress  many  with 
the  idea  that  this  is  the  true  way  to  make  men  tem- 
perate. A  partial  success  in  Maine  has  been  pro- 
claimed as  proving  the  question  against  the  painful 
failures  everywhere  else ;  but  no  careful  observer  will 
either  approve  the  specimen  or  take  it  as  a  proof 
against  our  general  position.  Maine  is  but  a  small 
part  of  our  country,  and  has  no  great  seething  popula- 
tion made  up  from  every  nation  on  earth.  It  has  a 
highly  educated  people,  who  can  bear  an  experiment 
in  morals  with  something  of  a  philosophic  spirit.  A 
few  strong-minded  and  high-minded"  people  can  be- 
come ascetics,  but  the  great  world  cannot,  and  we  must 
legislate  for  the  great  world.  Even  Maine  cannot 
permanently  keep  its  Maine  Law. 

There  is  a  general  notion  in  the  public  mind  that 
the  present  condition  of  Maine  in  regard  to  the  liquor 
question  is  that  of  a  temporary  repression;  and, 
whether  that  notion  be  right  or  wrong,  it  belongs  to 
that  public  opinion  which  has  to  be  regarded  in  all 
prudential  planning.  The  general  thought  of  the 
community  concerning  this  repression  is  that  it 
belongs  to  a  system  of  intimidation,  that  can  never 
be  a  permanent  institution  in  this  land. 

I  have  thus  far  considered  only  the  prudential 
question.  The  total  abstinence  scheme  may  be  in 
strict  accordance  with  theoretical  virtue.  It  may  be 
the  grand  end  to  which  all  reforming  processes  should 
tend.  All  that  we  have  endeavored  thus  far  to  estab- 
lish is,  that  it  is  a  plan  that  cannot  succeed,  if  we  are 


156       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

to  judge  it  by  its  past  history  and  methods,  as  well  as 
by  its  intrinsic  principles,  and  that  therefore  to  push 
the  plan  is  to  defeat  the  great  end  we  should  all  have 
in  view, — ^.the  cessation  of  drunkenness,  with  its  fearful 
ruin  to  body,  soul,  and  society.  We  have  endeavored 
to  show  that  the  public  mind  will  not  receive  a  sys- 
tem whose  principal  agencies  have  been  falsehoods 
and  intimidation,  and  whose  principles  they  consider  to 
be  at  war  with  a  proper  manliness  or  self-respect.  We 
repeat  (that  no  one  may  mistake  us)  that  these  false- 
hoods and  intimidations  are  not  necessary  parts  of  the 
system,  but  have  been  its  constant  adjuncts  in  point 
of  fact,  and  we  also  repeat  that  our  argument  regard- 
ing manliness  is  not  (so  far  as  we  have  gone)  so  much 
a  charge  against  the  system,  as  a  statement  of  what 
a  very  large  portion  of  respectable  and  virtuous 
thinkers  think  of  it.  It  is  from  such  considerations, 
we  hold,  that  the  plan  of  total  abstinence  as  a  method 
of  eradicating  drunkenness  and  its  attendant  vices 
will  never  be  adopted  by  the  community.  One  other 
thing  I  desire  to  repeat  before  taking  up  the  other 
branch  of  my  subject;  and  that  is,  that  I  make  no 
charge  of  purposed  falsehood  on  any  of  the  total  absti- 
nence leaders.  Their  main  arguments  are  falsehoods 
as  I  have  shown,  but  I  am  quite  sure  that  the  excel- 
lent men  who  are  often  found  leading  the  crusade  are 
honest  in  their  use  of  these  false  statements.  They 
take  up  these  weapons  without  sufficiently  examining 
them.  They  see  that  they  can  be  made  effective,  but 
do  not  stop  to  inquire  whether  they  are  legitimate. 
Their  praiseworthy  zeal  outstrips  their  judgment  and 


THE  TEMPERANCE   QUESTION.  157 

prudence.  I  honor  the  heart  and  energy  of  very- 
many  of  these  men.  They  show  a  philanthropy  and 
consecration,  involving  often  self-denial  and  loss, 
which  demand  our  admiration.  They  are  indeed  too 
often  mixed  up  with  low,  hypocritical  self-seekers, 
who  make  the  temperance  cause  a  mere  lever  to  raise 
money, but  that  does  not  detract  from  the  sterling 
devotion  of  these  noble  souls.  And  while  I  differ 
from  them  altogether  in  my  views,  and  am  thorough- 
ly convinced  they  are  doing  unmeasured  harm  to 
the  community  by  retarding  practical  reform  and  dis- 
seminating pernicious  principles,  at  the  same  time 
I  would  not  refrain  from  yielding  this  honest  and 
hearty  tribute  to  their  intentions,  and  disclaim  any 
personal  reproach  while  criticising  the  system  they 
advocate. 

2.  The  Moral  Question.  —  The  prudential  question 
being  thus  treated,  I  turn  to  the  moral  question  be- 
fore us.  "  Ought  the  plan  of  total  abstinence  to  be 
adopted  ?  "  Is  it  a  healthful  and  legitimate  method 
of  doing  away  with  drunkenness  ?  A  man  stands  at 
a  great  disadvantage  who  argues  in  behalf  of  his  belief 
that  the  total  abstinence  .  system  is  immoral,  because 
he  at  once  exposes  himself  to  the  assaults  of  slander- 
ers who  impugn  his  motives  and  deny  his  honesty. 
Eadicalism  has  so  ruthlessly  mobbed  down  indepen- 
dent thought  by  its  intimidating  processes,  that  editors 
who  have  no  faith  in  the  total  abstinence  system  still 
uphold  it  in  their  columns,  and  ministers  deem  it 
prudent  to  say  nothing  against  a  cause  so  popular 
in  religious  circles.     Men  are  loth  to  come  forward 


158       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

and  be  bespattered  with  mud  thrown  in  the  name  of 
truth  and  godliness.  They  are  loth  to  lose  the  sup- 
port and  good-will  of  the  many  whose  fanaticism 
despises  argument  and  brooks  no  opposition.  Hence, 
if  any  one  is  constrained  to  speak,  he  is  tempted 
to  come  forward  as  a  humble  apologist  and  modestly 
plead  his  cause  with  many  concessions  and  compro- 
mises. Surely  this  is  not  for  the  advantage  of  the 
truth. 

In  this  address  I  take  no  apologetic  position.  I 
carry  the  war  into  Africa.  I  have  no  contest  with 
men,  but  with  false  principles.  I  assert  that  the  total 
abstinence  system  is  false  in  its  philosophy,  contrary 
to  revealed  religion,  and  harmful  to  the  interests  of 
our  country.  I  charge  upon  this  system  the  growth 
of  drunkenness  in  our  land  and  a  general  demoral- 
ization among  religious  communities.  And  I  call 
upon  sound-minded,  thinking  men  to  stop  the  enor- 
mities of  this  false  system  by  uniting  in  reasonable 
and  wholesome  measures  for  the  suppression  of  drunk- 
enness, for  the  lack  of  which  this  false  system  has  all 
its  present  success.  Between  fanaticism  on  one  hand 
and  licentiousness  on  the  other,  there  ought  to  be  a 
large  mass  of  solid  folk,  whose  union  and  efficiency 
would  moderate  and  reduce,  if  not  destroy,  both  ex- 
tremes. 

1.  The  first  moral  error  of  the  total  abstinence 
system  is  in  turning  a  medicinal  prescription  into  a 
bill  of  fare  for  all  mankind.  That  a  drunkard  should 
carefully  avoid  every  form  of  alcoholic  drink  nobody 
can  deny.     He  is  a  diseased  man,  and  his  restoration 


THE  TEMPERANCE   QUESTION.  159 

depends  on  this  restriction.  Now  by  what  logic  does 
this  man's  duty  become  mine  ?  Because  I  have 
admitted  total  abstinence  as  a  correct  principle  in  his 
case,  am  I  bound  to  admit  it  as  a  correct  principle 
for  all  ?  Are  the  sick  to  be  the  norm  of  the  well  ? 
Is  the  matter  of  diet  to  be  regulated  by  the  needs  of 
the  drunkard  ?  Why  not,  then,  by  the  needs  of  the 
dyspeptic  ?  Ah  !  but  (say  they)  it  is  to  save  you  from 
lecoming  a  drunkard.  Well,  is  the  logic  any  way  im- 
proved by  this  explanation  ?  You  would  put  me  on 
a  sick  regimen  to  keep  me  from  becoming  sick  !  Be- 
cause total  abstinence  is  absolutely  necessary  to  a 
drunkard's  recovery,  you  would  make  it  necessary 
to  one  who  is  not  a  drunkard.  Do  you  not  see  that, 
if  you  are  going  to  prove  your  latter  proposition,  you 
must  have  another  premise  than  your  former  one? 
The  two  are  wholly  unconnected.  It  is  an  offence 
to  the  moral  sense  of  the  community  to  spread  over  it 
the  restriction  of  the  drunkard,  as  it  would  be  to  im- 
prison all  the  community  with  the  imprisonment 
of  the  thief,  lest  by  liberty  they  should  all  fall  to 
thieving. 

2.  A  second  moral  error  of  the  total  abstinence 
theory  is  its  assumption  that  moderate  drinking  leads 
to  drunkenness.  The  millions  upon  millions  of  our 
race  who  have  been  accustomed  to  drink  wine,  and 
who  never  knew  drunkenness,  stand  up  against  this 
atrocious  dogma.  And  yet  this  dogma  has  actually 
become  an  axiom  with  the  total  abstinence  reformers, 
and  they  would  disdain  to  argue  it.  They  are  so  de- 
termined to  have  it  true  that  they  have  performed  the 


160       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

paradoxical  operation  of  putting  the  moderate  drinker 
in  the  place  of  the  drunkard  as  the  criminal  to  be 
punished  with  scorn  and  contumely.  This  strange 
mixing  of  things  reminds  me  of  the  calling  good  evil 
and  evil  good,  which  a  high  authority  makes  a  mark 
of  very  deep  depravity.  You  will  find  that  the  prin- 
cipal shafts  of  the  total  abstinence  literature  are 
directed,  not  at  the  drunkard,  but  at  the  moderate 
drinker.  The  drunkard  is  pitied  and  coddled,  while 
the  moderate  drinker  is  scourged.  Now,  this  sort  of 
moral  jugglery  is  not  beneficial  to  the  community. 
It  distorts  and  perverts  judgment,  and  involves  moral 
distinctions  in  chaotic  confusion.  It  overthrows  the 
ordinary  reason  that  is  so  useful  in  all  the  relations 
of  life,  and  leads  men  to  clannish  obedience  to  some 
ruling  mind.  It  is  the  old  trick  of  the  Jesuits,  to 
weary  the  mind  in  mazes,  so  that  it  may,  in  sheer  fa- 
tigue, seek  to  be  guided  by  them. 

3.  A  third  moral  error  of  the  total  abstinence  the- 
ory is  its  want  of  discrimination  between  things  that 
differ.  Everything  that  has  alcohol  in  it  must  be 
tabooed.  As  if  all  the  drinks  that  had  alcohol  in 
them  were  of  the  same  effect  when  drunk.  Brandy 
and  hock  wine  and  lager  beer  are  all  alike  the  devil's 
poison,  and  must  be  banished  from  the  lips  of  all  true 
men.  This  assault  upon  common  knowledge  is  a 
blunder  that  has  the  proportions  of  a  crime.  To  say 
that  certain  drinks  that  are  wholesome  and  beneficial 
are  the  same  as  certain  drinks  that  are  pernicious  and 
destructive,  is  a  moral  outrage  which  the  whole  com- 
munity should   indignantly  repel      Beers   and   un- 


THE  TEMPERANCE   QUESTION.  161 

brandied  wines  are  promoters  of  health  and  strength 
when  used  judiciously,  especially  by  those  who  have 
not  robust  health.  They  are  tonic,  anti-scorbutic, 
and  gently  stimulating  to  the  digestion.  As  Dr. 
Parkes,  who  is  a  strong  opposer  of  the  use  of  distilled 
liquors,  says  :  "  For  the  large  class  of  people  who  live 
on  the  confines  of  health,  whose  digestion  is  feeble, 
circulation  languid,  and  nervous  system  too  excit- 
able," mild  w4nes  and  malt  liquors  are  beneficial. 
The  fact  is,  that  (as  another  writer  well  says)  outside 
of  the  sick-room  the  distilled  liquors  are  compara- 
tively noxious,  the  fermented  comparatively  harmless. 
"What  we  desire  to  emphasize  is,  that  the  two  classes 
of  drinks  are  altogether  different  in  their  character 
and  effect,  and  that  a  theory  which  destroys  that  dif- 
ference has  therein  a  moral  stain.  , 

4.  A  fourth  moral  error  of  the  total  abstinence  sys- 
tem is  its  assertion  that  all  drinks  that  contain  alcohol 
are  poison ;  that  the  presence  of  alcohol  thus  justifies 
the  confounding  of  different  sorts  of  drink  just  referred 
to.  Dr.  Anstie  has  clearly  shown  that  alcohol  in  small 
quantities  is  not  a  poison  but  a  true  food,  and  that  it 
is  a  stimulant  to  the  system  in  precisely  the  same 
sense  as  that  in  which  food  is  a  stimulant.  He  has 
shown  that  there  is  an  essential  difference  between  the 
effects  of  large  and  small  quantities  of  alcohol,  a  dif- 
erence  of  kiml  and  not  of  degree.  The  effect  of  the 
small  quantity,  he  says,  is  often  beneficial ;  the  effect  of 
the  large  or  narcotic  quantity  is  injurious.  Dr.  Binz 
defines /ooc?  as  both  building  up  the  tissues  and  sup- 
plying the  warmth  and  vital  force  necessary  for  the 

11 


162       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

body's  functions ;  and  he  shows  that,  while  small  quan- 
tities of  alcohol  have  not  the  former  quality,  they  have 
the  latter,  and  he  further  shows  that  alcohol  in  mod- 
erate quantities  is  entirely  assimilated  in  the  human 
system.  In  the  light  wines  and  beers,  where  alcohol 
forms  only  from  three  to  ten  per  cent  of  its  liquid, 
we  have  the  alcohol  in  the  form  best  adapted  for  this 
beneficial  effect,  while  in  brandies,  rums,  gins,  whiskeys, 
and  all  distilled  liquors  the  alcohol  is  in  dangerous 
proportions  for  a  beverage.  To  say  that  everything 
containing  alcohol  is  a  poison,  is  therefore  a  false 
assertion,  as  false  as  to  say  that  fruit  is  poisonous 
because  prussic  acid,  which  is  a  deadly  poison,  is 
found  in  it.  Nature  has  in  her  alembic  turned  a 
powerful  and  dangerous  element  into  a  beneficial 
minister  to  human  wants,  and  all  nations  have  recog- 
nized this  vital  difference  between  a  moderate  and  an 
excessive  use  of  stimulants,  and  have  testified  to 
the  wisdom  of  using  Nature's  provision  without  abus- 
ing it. 

5.  A  fifth  moral  error  of  the  total  abstinence  sys- 
tem is  its  dependence  upon  a  contract  rather  than  on 
a  moral  sense.  Instead  of  regulating  a  man  from 
within,  it  would  apply  a  strait-jacket.  Instead  of 
allowing  a  free  play  of  the  man's  individuality,  and 
then  endeavoring  to  instruct  and  educate  the  man's 
reason,  it  would  in  a  moment  of  the  man's  emergency 
tie  up  his  conscience  with  a  pledge,  which,  when  the 
emergency  is  past,  he  will  bear  irksomely  and  en- 
deavor to  nullify  or  evade.  This  is  a  most  pernicious 
instrument  for  debauching  the  conscience.      In  the 


THE  TEMPERANCE   QUESTION.  163 

first  place,  it  manufactures  a  new  sin,  always  a  dan- 
gerous experiment,  bringing  about  a  reaction  which 
sweeps  the  soul  into  real  sin  from  its  experience  in 
committing  the  constructed  sin;  and,  secondly,  it 
gives  a  ready  excuse  to  the  conscience  against  any 
moral  argument  for  temperance  by  covering  it  with 
a  suspicion  of  conventionality.  The  pledge  is  always 
an  injury  and  never  a  help  to  a  true  morality.  It  is  a 
substitute  for  principle.  It  is  a  sign,  not  of  weakness 
(for  we  are  all  of  us  weak  enough),  but  of  readiness  to 
reform.  The  true  reform  would  demand  a  change  of 
the  underlying  principles  of  life.  That  the  pledge- 
taker  refuses  to  make.  Instead  of  that  he  reforms 
the  surface.  Instead  of  turning  the  stream  into  a 
new  channel,  he  contents  himself  with  throwing  up 
earthen  dykes  to  prevent  an  overflow.  You  can  get 
thousands  to  sign  the  pledge  where  you  can  get  one  to 
reform.  Of  course  the  pledge  is  not  kept,  except  in 
the  cases  where  it  was  not  needed,  where  the  reform 
took  the  place  of  the  pledge,  where  the  man  would 
have  reformed  without  any  pledge.  Surely  such,  a 
wholesale  defiling  of  promises  is  a  profane  dealing  with 
sacred  things,  and  marks  a  very  corrupt  system.  Man's 
moral  nature  is  not  to  be  curbed  by  pledges.  His 
outward  conduct  may  be  restrained  by  imposed  law, 
but  so  far  forth  as  that  conduct  has  a  moral  element 
in  it,  no  action  of  the  man  himself  can  effect  it  except 
a  moral  reformation.  Government,  by  its  threatened 
punishment,  may  stop  a  man's  drinking  so  long  as  he 
thinks  himself  in  danger  of  punishment,  but  a  pledge 
that  has  no  punishment  for  its  breaking  will  command 


164       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

no   obedience,  while   the   moral   convictions   remain 
unchanged.     It  is  only  an  invitation  to  further  sin. 

6.  The  sixth  and  last  moral  error  of  the  total  ab- 
stinence system  to  which  I  shall  refer  is  one  which  I 
bring  forward  not  as  a  philosopher  nor  a  moralist,  but 
as  a  Christian  who  believes  in  the  divine  authority 
of  the  Holy  Scriptures.  This  error  I  liave  already 
adverted  to  in  my  prudential  argument,  and  therefore 
need  not  enlarge  upon  here.  It  is  impossible  to  con- 
demn all  drinking  of  wine  as  either  sinful  or  improper, 
without  bringing  reproach  upon  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
and  his  apostles.  There  has  been  an  immense  amount 
of  wriggling  by  Christian  writers  on  this  subject  to  get 
away  from  this  alternative ;  but  there  it  stands  impreg- 
nable. Jesus  did  use  wine.  I  will  not  waste  my  time 
in  proving  this  proposition,  and  answering  those  wild 
hashibazouks  of  controversy,  who  assert  with  childlike 
confidence  and  simplicity  that  the  Bible  wines  were 
unfermented  grape-juice.  Their  learned  ignorance  is 
fairly  splendid  with  boldness.  They  disarm  criticism 
by  their  overwhelming  dash.  Such  little  questions  as 
why  the  epithet  wine-hihher  should  have  been  oppro- 
brious, why  deacons  should  not  be  given  to  much 
wine,  why  the  Corinthian  communicants  should  be- 
come drunken,  why  the  Apostles  at  Pentecost  should 
have  been  accused  of  wine-drinking  as  the  cause  of 
their  strange  utterances,  —  all  such  trifling  questions 
they  utterly  disdain  to  notice  in  the  magnificent  sweep 
of  their  assertion.  It  is  a  small  thing,  too,  with  them, 
that  the  Apostles  never  hint  at  two  kinds  of  wine,  a 
good  unfermented  wine  and  a  bad  fermented   one, 


THE  TEMPERANCE   QUESTION.  165 

when  it  would  have  been  so  easy  and  natural  for  our 
Lord  or  for  Paul  to  say,  "  Drink  only  the  unfermented 
wine."  Instead  of  that,  they  lead  us  into  great  danger 
by  their  unguarded  remarks  about  wine  as  if  there 
were  but  one  sort ;  nay,  worse  than  that,  Paul  even 
tells  the  deacons  not  to  drink  too  much  wine.  Did 
Paul  mean  the  fermented  wine  ?  Then  he  allowed 
the  deacons  to  use  it  as  a  beverage.  Did  he  mean 
unfermented  wine?  Then  why  did  he  limit  the 
amount  ?  This  dilemma  and  all  the  other  arguments 
from  the  Scripture  are  as  mere  cobwebs  to  the  lances 
of  these  valiant  knights,  who  are  too  free  and  fiery  to 
be  checked  by  reason  or  overcome  by  a  syllogism.  To 
a  foot-pilgrim  like  myself,  however,  these  Scriptures 
are  convincing  and  end  the  controversy,  and  therefore 
I  have  to  charge  the  total  abstinence  propaganda  with 
wresting  the  Scriptures  and  despising  their  authority. 
I  know  that  there  is  a  wing  of  their  army  which 
acknowledges  all  that  I  have  said  of  Scripture  record, 
and  which  holds  that  times  are  so  changed  that  the 
Scripture  examples  and  precepts  are  now  obsolete, 
that  they  were  made  for  an  Oriental  people  eighteen 
centuries  ago,  and  are  wholly  inapplicable  in  the  great 
Occident  in  this  nineteenth  century.  But  this  wing 
of  the  host  is  a  very  weak  wing,  and  is  often  very 
thoroughly  snubbed  by  the  loud  leaders  who  count 
their  position  a  giving  up  of  the  contest,  as  indeed  it 
is.  For  who  will  believe  that  Christ  and  his  Apostles, 
on  great  moral  questions  and  matters  of  moral  conduct, 
gave  example  and  precept  that  would  not  last  ?  The 
argument  runs  this  way  :  Christ  and  his  Apostles  said 


166       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

that  we  may  drink  wine,  but  that  was  a  local  and  tem- 
porary matter.  Now,  under  new  circumstances,  we 
must  not.  Christ  and  his  Apostles  said  that  Chris- 
tians must  not  be  mixed  with  the  ungodly  world,  but 
that  was  local  and  temporary,  when  idolatry  was 
rife.  Now,  under  new  circumstances.  Christians  and 
the  ungodly  world  may  so  intermingle  that  you  can't 
tell  one  from  the  other.  The  Apostle  of  Christ  said 
that  women  must  keep  silence  in  the  churches,  but 
that  was  local  and  temporary,  when  women  were  not 
much  more  than  slaves.  Now,  under  new  circum- 
stances, women  may  mount  platform  and  pulpit  as 
exhorters  and  preachers,  for,  verily,  under  the  gospel 
there  is  no  difference  between  male  and  female !  I 
said,  Who  will  believe  all  this  ?  Alas  !  there  are  many 
who  do.  And  I  charge  them  with  undermining  the 
authority  of  the  Word  of  God.  If  moral  questions 
that  are  not  in  the  Scripture  are  to  be  thus  treated, 
who  is  to  draw  the  line  where  you  are  to  stop  ?  why 
may  not  the  Christian  merchant  say  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment command,  "  Lie  not  one  to  another,"  this  is  local 
and  temporary,  when  trade  was  sluggish  and  men's 
minds  were  dull?  Now,  under  new  circumstances, 
when  emulation  needs  every  help  and  Wall  Street 
sharpens  men's  wits,  you  must  lie  or  go  under.  This 
departure  from  the  Bible  sentiment  and  example  on 
moral  conduct  in  us  who  believe  in  the  Bible  is  a  very 
dangerous  thing.  Of  course,  for  the  Buddhists,  who 
have  lately  become  fashionable  in  our  country,  it  is  of 
no  consequence.  And  to  them  this  division  of  my 
argument  is  not  addressed. 


THE   TEMPERANCE   QUESTION.  167 

I  have  now  endeavored,  in  a  very  brief  way,  to 
point  out  the  reasons  why  the  total  abstinence  system 
as  a  cure  for  intemperance  will  not  and  ought  not  to  be 
adopted.  Of  course,  I  am,  therefore,  bound  to  pro- 
pose a  system  that  ought  to  be  adopted.  I  do  not 
dodge  the  issue.  No  man  is  more  keenly  alive  to  the 
frightful  ravages  of  drunkenness  than  I  am,  and  it 
is  because  the  prevailing  system  of  a  total  abstinence 
crusade  is  hindering  the  cure  of  the  evil  by  keeping 
just  methods  from  the  field  and  by  disgusting  men's 
minds  with  the  very  name  of  temperance,  so  cruelly 
bemired,  that  I  denounce  it,  and  ask  good  men  to 
rally  around  a  truer  and  purer  standard. 

The  right  system  must  be  one  that  recognizes  prac- 
tically the  difference  between  excess  and  moderation, 
and  the  difference  between  injurious  and  harmless 
drinks,  and  will  thus  appeal  to  the  common  sense  of 
reasonable  and  thinking  men.  It  must  be  a  system 
that  deals  honestly  with  history,  science,  and  Scrip- 
ture, and  does  not  invent  theories  and  then  support 
them  by  garbled  quotations  and  imaginary  facts.  It 
must  be  a  manly  system,  that  has  no  cant  or  foolery 
of  orders  and  ribbons,  degrading  a  matter  of  high  prin- 
ciple to  the  hocus  pocus  of  a  child's  play.  Such  a  sys- 
tem would  be  found  in  the  exclusion  of  distilled  liquor 
from  common  use  as  beverage  both  by  public  opinion 
and  by  law,  and  the  wise  regulation  in  society  and  in 
the  State  of  the  use  of  vinous  and  malt  liquors.  Soci- 
ety should  put  away  all  the  drinking  usages  that  lead 
to  excess,  such  as  furnishing  many  wines  at  an  enter- 
tainment, or  "  treating "  others,  or  putting  brandied 


168       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

wines  upon  the  table ;  and  the  State  should  limit  the 
number  of  licensed  sellers  to  at  most  the  proportion 
of  one  to  a  thousand  inhabitants  of  each  town,  and 
these  sellers  should  be  under  heavy  bonds  not  to  sell 
to  minors  or  drunkards,  and  not  to  allow  disreputable 
characters  to  gather  at  their  places.  The  law  should 
likewise  make  the  collection  of  evidence  aoainst  a 
licensed  seller  easy,  and  the  penalty  of  breaking  the 
law  should  be  imprisonment  as  well  as  fine.  On  a 
basis  like  this,  that  does  not  sweepingly  condemn 
every  drink  that  has  alcohol  in  it,  the  great  majority 
of  the  people  could  work  accordantly,  and  therefore 
effectively.  The  wild  radicalism  of  the  teetotalers 
is  just  what  the  rum-sellers  and  their  advocates 
enjoy.  They  know  that  this  absurd  extravagance 
disintegrates  the  army  of  order  and  renders  it  power- 
less ;  that  so  long  as  temperance  is  made  to  mean 
"  total  abstinence  from  everything  that  can  intoxicate," 
the  great  multitude  of  order-loving  men  will  shrink 
from  joining  any  temperance  movement,  and  hence 
these  wholesale  destroyers  of  the  race  can  go  on  in 
their  nefarious  work  with  impunity.  Now,  what  is 
needed  is  the  union  of  all  good  men  who  desire  to 
stop  the  fearful  drunkenness  of  the  land,  with  its 
attendant  crimes  and  misery.  That  union  never  can 
be  effected  on  the  principles  of  the  total  abstinence 
propaganda.  But  it  can  be  effected  on  the  principles 
of  truth  and  common  sense,  and  they  who  prevent 
this  union  by  their  tenacious  adherence  to  a  false  and 
fanatical  system  are  responsible  before  God  and  man 
for  the  spreading  curse. 


THE   TEMPERANCE  QUESTION.  169 

There  is  no  more  important  question  before  the 
American  people  to-day  than  this,  "  How  shall  we 
stay  this  surging  tide  of  intemperance  ? "  And  it  is  to 
be  answered  on  one  side  by  the  practical  voice  of 
society,  and  on  the  other  by  the  edicts  of  our  legisla- 
tures. We  should  act  with  an  even  mind  on  so  grave 
a  subject,  and  see  to  it  that  every  step  we  take  is 
solidly  founded  on  right  reason.  We  should  urge 
before  our  legislatures  plans  that  are  free  from  the 
taint  of  crude  prejudice  and  instinct  with  practical 
wisdom ;  and  when  we  do  this,  we  shall  be  surprised 
to  see  how  many,  whom  we  took  to  be  enemies,  there 
are  who  are  ready  to  join  us  in  the  work  and  estab- 
lish foundations  of  order  and  peace  in  the  land,  that 
shall  save  us  from  a  moral  slough. 

Let  rpe,  in  conclusion,  distinctly  say  that  I  do  not 
oppose  the  principle  of  total  abstinence  from  all  that 
intoxicates  for  tlu,  individual.  Every  man  is  at 
liberty  to  abstain,  if  he  will,  and  it  is  his  duty  to 
abstain  if  his  own  conscience  command  it.  That 
against  which  I  contend,  and  which  T  hold  up  as  the 
hindrance  to  true  reform  and  the  promoter  of  the 
drunkard's  cause,  is  the  total  abstinence  crusade  or 
propaganda,  the  forcing  total  abstinence  upon  the 
community  as  the  duty  of  all,  the  putting  imder  the 
ban  every  one  who  does  not  follow  that  standard 
the  insisting  upon  total  abstinence  as  the  only  safety 
against  drunkenness.  It  is  this  headlong  movement 
whicl)  virtually  cries,  "  The  Koran  or  the  sword  !  "  and 
tramples  alike  on  reason  and  Scripture  in  its  blind 
rush,  —  it  is  this,  and  not  private  total  abstinence. 


•/ 


170       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 


against  which  I  inveigh.  And  let  me  also  repeat 
that  I  am  attacking  a  system,  and  not  persons.  I 
have  no  war  with  men,  but  with  error.  I  can  honor 
the  men  who  uphold  a  pernicious  system,  for  I  can 
believe  in  their  purity  of  motive  and  singleness  of 
aim.  And  for  this  reason  I  the  more  earnestly  and 
hopefully  urge  them  to  consider  their  ways,  and  aban- 
don a  course  which  is  only  confirming  ^the  dreadful 
curse  we  all  abhor  and  desire  to  remove. 


APPENDIX. 


As  some  replies  to  the  above  lecture  have  been 
made  by  Mr.  Wendell  Phillips  and  others,  whose 
rhetoric  is  superior  to  their  logic,  it  may  be  well  for 
me  to  add  a  few  words  to  those  who  might  mistake 
assertion  for  argument  and  epithet  for  proof. 

1.  That  I  am  behind  the  age  I  freely  confess,  but 
I  am  more  than  the  "fifty  years  behind"  which  these 
gentlemen  affirm.  I  am  eighteen  hundred  years 
behind.  I  am  with  Christ  and  his  Apostles  against 
an  age  that  makes  light  of  the  inspired  Word  and 
prefers  man's  methods  to  God's. 

2.  All  the  eloquence  expended  on  my  opposition 
to  total  abstinence  is  hrutum  fulmen,  as  my  whole 
argument  was  against  the  total  abstinence  system,  and 
not  against  total  abstinence.  The  system  I  defined 
at  the  beginning  as  demanding  total  abstinence  from 
all  liquors  that  may  intoxicate,  on  the  part  of  every- 


THE  TEMPERANCE  QUESTION.  171 

body,  as  a  moral  duty.     It  is  this  giving  law  to  the 
world  on  the  subject  that  I  denounce. 

3.  A  picture  of  the  terrible  ravages  of  drunkenness 
is  no  answer  to  one  who  objects  to  a  false  mode  of 
meeting  the  evil.  The  false  mode  will  only  make 
those  ravages  the  greater.  It  is  a  favorite  method 
with  Mr.  Phillips  and  the  stereotyped  "temperance 
lecturer,"  to  attack  the  opponents  of  the  total  absti- 
nence system  with  harrowing  pictures  of  the  distress 
and  misery  caused  by  drunkenness,  thus  assuming 
that  their  system  is  the  right  one.  Suppose  a  fanatic 
tells  me  that  Boston  ought  to  be  destroyed  because 
of  the  abominable  vice  in  it,  and  I  should  in  reply 
suggest  that  there  might  be  a  better  way  of  meeting 
the  emergency,  what  would  you  think  of  his  counter 
reply  by  exclaiming  at  the  fearfulness  of  these  sins 
committed  in  Boston?  The  teetotal  fanatics  coolly 
assume  that  we  who  oppose  their  wild  theories  are 
either  unaware  of  the  terrible  evils  of  drunkenness  or 
else  wilful  abettors  of  the  depi-aved  classes. 

4.  The  two-wine  theory  regarding  the  Scriptures, 
silly  as  it  is,  cannot  help  the  teetotalers,  for  the  wine 
drunk  at  the  Lord's  Supper  by  the  Corinthians  intoxi- 
cated them,  and  yet  the  Apostle  never  thinks  of  telling 
them  that  they  took  the  wrong  kind  of  wine.  So  the 
command  to  the  deacons  and  others  not  to  be  given 
to  much  wine  shows  that  the  Apostles  had  fermented 
wine  in  view. 

5.  The  oft-quoted  text,  "  If  meat  make  my  brother 
to  offend,  &c.,"  only  shows  that  a  man  must  judge  for 
'himself  as  to  the  use  of  his  privileges.     The  Apostle 


172       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

Paul,  on  this  very  matter  of  meat,  told  the  Corin- 
thians to  eat  what  was  set  before  them  and  ask  no 
questions,  but  if  a  special  case  occurred  to  refuse  to  eat 
it.  It  was  on  special  occasions  they  were  to  abstain, 
not  perpetually ;  and,  accordingly,  who  supposes  that 
Paul  gave  up  eating  meat  for  the  rest  of  his  life  ? 
Now  apply  the  Apostle's  precept  and  example  to  the 
other  matter  of  wine.  "  On  special  occasions,  of  which 
each  man  is  the  only  judge,  we  are  to  abstain.  That 
is  the  whole  of  this  abused  argument  of  expediency. 
The  teetotalers  turn  expediency  into  law. 
'  6.  The  man  who  drinks  brandy,  and  quotes  another 
that  drinks  wine  as  his  example,  is  as  wilful  a  liar  as 
the  man  who  smokes  opium,  and  quotes  the  man  that 
smokes  tobacco  as  his  example.  The  drunkard  who 
quotes  a  man  that  drinks  wine  in  moderation  as  his 
example  is  as  wilful  a  liar  as  the  thief  who  steals  a 
diamond  pin  to  wear,  and  quotes  Mr.  Phillips  wearing 
a  diamond  pin  as  his  example.  The  "  example  "  idea 
is  a  mere  ruse  that  he  holds  up  to  deceive  silly  folk. 
He  himself  sees  no  example  in  it. 

7.  The  comparison  of  moderate  drinking  with 
slavery  as  equally  upheld  by  the  New  Testament, 
and  yet  now  to  be  abolished,  is  altogether  lame. 
Our  Lord  drank  and  made  wine.  Did  he  buy,  sell, 
or  own  a  slave  ? 

8.  So  all  classification  of  drinking  wine  with 
crimes,  and  tlierefore  the  demand  of  a  like  treat- 
ment for  both  (see  Mr.  Phillips's  pretty  passage  on 
"  gambling  hells "  and  ''  flash  literature "),  are  the 
errors  of  a  juvenile  reasoning. 


THE  TEMPERANCE   QUESTION.  173 

9.  The  improvement  in  the  social  customs  with 
regard  to  drinking,  the  result  of  prayer  and  labor  on 
the  part  of  all  good  men,  is  pleasantly  appropriated 
by  the  teetotalers  as  their  work.  I  like  that.  It  is 
bold. 

10.  An  honest,  upright,  manly  course,  in  which  we 
call  things  by  their  right  names,  and  make  no  sweeping 
assertions  that  confound  good  and  evil,  is  the  course 
that  effects  most  for  the  truth  in  life  and  conduct. 
Then  the  conscience  and  the  regard  of  the  men  we 
desire  to  turn  from  immoral  ways  will  be  touched,  for 
they  immediately  see  that  we  act  not  from  passion," 
but  from  reason.  The  fanatical  system  only  antago- 
nizes the  class  we  wish  to  convert.  I  am  sure  Mr. 
Phillips  will  forgive  me  if  I  seek  to  restore  the  system 
of  reason  and  common  sense,  which,  under  the  pro- 
gressive inventions  of  the  teetotalers,  is  in  danger  of 
taking  its  place  with  "  the  Lost  Arts." 


VII. 

OLD    AND    NEW    THEOLOGIES. 

Bt  rev.  GEORGE  E.  CROOKS,  D.D.,  LL.D. 


VII. 
OLD    AND    NEW    THEOLOGIES. 

By  rev.  GEORGE  R.  CROOKS,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

^T^HE  signs  of  a  demand  for  a  new  theology  are  so 
-■-  many,  that  he  who  runs  may  read  them.  As 
specimens,  let  us  quote  a  few.  A  leading  Baptist 
minister  of  this  country  says  :  "  Doubtless  there  will 
be  in  the  future  a  new  theology,  an  outgrowth  of  the 
old,  an  expansion  and  deepening  of  sacred  truth  made 
precious  to  the  church  by  many  centuries  of  rich 
experience." 

Dr.  Crosby  is  quoted  as  saying  that  it  "  would  be 
wise  to  broaden  the  terms  of  subscription  necessary 
to  church  membership  and  church  ministry "  ;  this 
would  be  a  letting  go  of  some  ideas  once  sacredly 
cherished.  A  leader  of  the  English  Congregation- 
alists,  J.  Baldwin  Brown,  expresses  a  desire  "to  see  a 
great  dogmatist  once  more."  In  the  spring  of  1878 
the  United  Presbyterians  of  Scotland  added  supple- 
mentary declarations  to  the  Westminster  Confession, 
which  practically  nullified  some  of  its  important 
statements.  Dr.  William  M.  Taylor,  who  has  passed 
from  Presbyterianism  to  Congregationalism,  in  com- 

12 


178       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

meriting  on  this  action,  has  expressed  the  hope  for  "  a 
shorter,  simpler,  less  metaphysical  and  more  compre- 
hensive creed."  Principal  Shairp,  of  St.  Andrew's, 
Scotland,  echoes  the  opinions  of  the  Americans 
quoted.  "  It  needs  no  divine,"  he  writes,  "  to  tell  us 
that  this  century  will  not  pass  without  a  great  break- 
ing up  of  the  great  dogmatic  structures  that  have 
held  ever  since  the  Keformation  or  the  succeeding 
age.  From  many  sides,  at  once  a  simplifying  of  the 
code,  a  revision  of  the  standards,  is  being  de- 
manded." Dr.  Philip  Schaff,  in  the  Presbyterian 
Alliance  at  Edinburgh,  practically  called  for  a  re- 
casting of  the  confessional  statements  of  the  Eeformed 
churches,  saying  :  "  Every  age  must  produce  its  own 
theology,  adapted  to  its  peculiar  condition  and  wants. 
Thus  w^e  have  a  patristic  theology,  a  scholastic  the- 
ology, a  Reformation  theology,  and  a  modern  Evan- 
gelical theology,  not  to  speak  of  the  various  shades 
jf  of  denominational  theologies.  Divine  truth,  as  re- 
/"  vealed  in  the  Scriptures,  is  unchangeable,  the  same 
to-day,  yesterday,  and  forever,  but  it  must  be  ever 
reproduced,  newly  appropriated,  and  represented  in 
all  its  phases.  Every  true  progress  in  theology  is 
conditioned  by  a  deep  study  and  understanding  of 
the  Word  of  God,  that  is  ever  new,  and  renewing  the 
church,  and  will  ever  remain  the  infallible  and  inex- 
haustible fountain  of  revealed  truth.  The  Scriptures 
may  have  been  studied  more  intensely  and  devoutly 
in  former  ages,  but  they  never  were  studied  so  ex- 
tensively and  with  such  an  array  of  facilities  and 
advantages  as  at  the  present  age.     Every  progress  in 


OLD  AND   NEW  THEOLOGIES.  179 

exegesis  must  have  its  effect  upon  systematic  theology 
and  the  symbolic  statement  of  trust."  [Harmony  of 
the  Reformed  Confessions,  pp.  36,  37.] 

What  is  the  meaning  of  all  this  ?  Are  the  founda- 
tions of  truth  giving  way  ?  Is ,  this  reaching  out 
after  new  formulas  of  faitli  a  symptom  of  dissatisfac- 
tion with  the  verities  of  Scripture  ?  Is  it  a  sign  of 
religious  progress,  or  of  religious  decay  ?  Were  this 
call  for  re-statement  of  doctrine  accompanied  with 
a  disposition  to  abandon  Scripture,  it  might  excite 
alarm ;  but  they  who  utter  the  call  profess,  and  we 
may  believe  possess,  a  deep  reverence  for  the  Word  of 
God.     Let  us  observe,  however  :  — 

All  theology  is  progressive.  It  has  advanced  from 
delicate  germs  to  its  present  stately  growth.  We 
can,  as  we  go  back  along  the  line  of  the  Christian 
ages,  stop  at  the  successive  points  of  time  when  the 
present  accepted  dcxjtrines  of  the  church,  one  after 
the  other,  reached  a  definite  form.  In  the  history  of 
our  religion  Scripture  is  original,  systems  of  doctrine 
are  derivative.  Scripture  is  divine,  theology  is 
Imman.  We  all  know  that  the  doctrinal  systems 
are  the  product  of  the  action  of  the  human  reason 
upon  the  contents  of  the  Word  of  God.  Sometimes 
truths  of  the  gospel  have  been  obscured  for  ages  and 
recovered  again,  as  in  the  Protestant  Reformation. 
That  justification  is  by  faith  alone,  and  that  Scripture 
is  the  sole  standard  of  appeal  in  matters  of  faith,  are 
the  doctrinal  positions  for  the  reassertion  of  which 
we  are  indebted  to  the  Fathers  of  the  Reformation. 
Their  present  prominence  is   not  much   over   three 


180       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

hundred  years  old ;  and  yet  they  have  been  so  power- 
fully operative  that  they  have  changed  the  character 
of  modern  civilization.  On  these  two,  as  corner- 
stones, the  fabric  of  Protestant  theology  has  been 
built.  We  owe,  therefore,  whatever  is  distinctive  of 
y  Protestant  culture,  society,  politics,  to  doctrinal  ideas, 
whose  formulation,  as  we  possess  them  in  our  creeds, 
is  comparatively  recent.  The  truths  are  old,  as  old 
as  the  gospel,  but  they  have  had  a  resurrection  unto 
life. 

It  does  not  follow,  because  we  admit  that  theology 
is  progressive,  that  we  are  ready  to  forsake  old  faiths. 
It  does  not  follow,  because  leaders  such  as  we  have 
quoted  desire  re-statements  of  points  in  their  doctri- 
I  nal  confessions,  that  they  are  about  to  surrender  the 
/  substance  of  Orthodox  doctrine.  It  does  not  follow, 
because  they  desire  to  relegate  some  of  the  matters 
of  belief  to  the  category  of  matters  of  opinion,  that 
they  are  about  to  surrender  the  essentials  of  Chris- 
tianity. "Every  man,"  says  Neander,  profoundly,  "is 
in  one  sense  an  historical  production ;  the  ideas  which 
form  his  life  have  come  to  him  through  the  course  of 
development  in  which  he  moves."  And  so  we  may 
claim  that  every  theology  is  a  historical  production. 
Whether  clearly  Scriptural  or  divergent  from  Scrip- 
ture, it  represents  some  tendency  rooted  in  human 
nature,  and  of  which  we  can  give  an  historical 
account.  But  of  that  body  of  doctrine  in  which 
the  Protestant  churches  agree,  we  may  say  that  it  is 
hallowed  to  us  by  the  prayers  and  labors  of  sainted 
men  ;  the  blood  of  martyrs  has  sealed  it ;  the  nations 


OLD  AND  NEW  THEOLOGIES.  181 

that  have  risen  under  its  inspiration  to  high  planes  of  ^ 
civilization  are  witnesses  of  its  power.     How,  then,  ^jg->^ 
are  we  to  explain  the  present  unrest  ?  " "^^Z 

It  is  not  easy  to  give  all  the  answers  to  this  ques- 
tion; but  a  notice  of  some  facts  in  the  religious 
movement  of  the  century  may  help  us  towards  some 
answers.  What  is  religion  essentially  ?  Is  it  right 
knowledge  ?  If  so,  piety  is  the  equivalent  of  Ortho- 
doxy. Is  it  right  external  practice  ?  If  so,  piety  is 
the  equivalent  of  morality.  Or  is  it  a  right  feeling 
toward  God  and  man  ?  If  so,  then  piety  is  the  equiv- 
alent of  a  certain  inner  life.  In  this  sense  piety  is 
conditioned  by  knowledge,  and  works  itself  out  in  y 
moral  practice.  The  characteristic  of  the  religious 
revival  which  we  have  inherited  from  the  past  cen- 
tury is,  that  it  has  drawn  attention  to  the  true  cen- 
tre of  subjective  religion.  That  centre  it  makes  to 
be  the  sense  of  forgiveness,  or,  as  it  is  sometimes  -^  • 
expressed,  the  consciousness  of  redemption.  Ee- 
ligion,  under  its  teaching,  appears  less  as  a  dogma 
to  be  received  than  as  a  life  to  be  lived.  Thus  we 
have  experimental  Christianity,  as  distinguished  from 
catechetical  Christianity,  or  sacramental  Christianity. 
But  this  change  in  the  view  of  subjective  Chris- 
tianity has  led  on  to  a  new  view  of  objective  Christian- 
ity. Those  doctrines  which  minister  to  life  —  the 
atonement,  its  freeness  and  fulness,  the  immediacy 
of  the  Divine  answer  to  faith,  and  the  direct  action 
of  the  spirit  at  the  moment  of  regeneration  —  have  ^ 
come  forward  into  prominence.  Thus  our  later  and 
living  theology  is   a  theology  of  the   spirit.     The 


182       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

growth  of  subjective  religion  iu  this  form  has  not  only 
projected  into  prominence  corresponding  doctrines  of 
theology,  but  has  tended  to  obscure  others,  which 
were  once  considered  of  paramount  importance. 
This  revival  of  subjective  religion  was,  however,  but 
a  return  to  the  first  period  of  the  Eeformation,  the 
period  of  its  glow,  its  ardor,  its  early  experience  of 
redemption  without  the  mediatory  offices  of  the 
church.  Luther  had  made  the  exegetical  discovery 
that  "the  just  shall  live  by  faith"  long  before  he 
had  translated  his  exegesis  into  experience.  During 
his  long  and  memorable  journey  to  Eome,  and   es- 

y^  pecially  in  his  hours  of  weariness  and  sickness,  the 
Pauline  formula,  "  The  just  shall  live  by  faith,"  was 
continually  present  to  his  mind.  Not  till  he  had 
personally  appropriated  Christ's  merits  by  faith  was 
the  Reformation  born  in  him ;  the  discarding  of  the 
Latin  Church  doctrine  of  penance,  and  of  the  media- 
torial character  of  the  priesthood,  following  therefrom 
of  necessity.  The  recovery  of  the  idea  of  the  priest- 
hood  of  the  people,  to  which  he  was  led  both  by  Scrip- 

'  ture  and  his  experience  of  redemption,  delivered  the 
church  from  the  bondage  of  a  thousand  years.  The 
Reformation,  as  it  was  born  in  Luther^  was  a  heart- 
birth  as  well  as  a  brain-birth ;  its  material  principle, 
justification  by  faith,  pointed  to  a  fact  of  the  inner 
life ;  its  formal  principle,  the  supreme  authority  of 
Scripture,  pointed  to  the  light  which  guides  us  to  that 
fact.  But  the  scholastic  habits  in  which  the  leaders 
of  the  Reformation  were  trained  were  too  strong  for 
them.     There  followed  the  period  of  glow  and  a  new 


OLD   AND   NEW  THEOLOGIES.  183 

life,  a  period  of  cold  confessionalism,  of  distrust  and 
dissensions,  of  the  strife  of  conservative  and  radical 
reform,  —  a  period  marked  by  a  tendency  to  consolidate 
almost  every  theological  opinion  into  an  authoritative 
dogma.  Each  church  was  gathered  as  into  a  fortress, 
and  the  walls  of  the  confessions  were  built  up  high, 
so  that  those  who  were  within  might  not  get  out,  and  ^ 
those  who  were  without  might  not  get  in.  In  a  word, 
it  was  a  period  in  Protestantism  of  alienation  and 
mutual  repellency. 

In  the  nature  of  the  case  such  a  condition  of  the 
churches  could  not  last.  A  prophet  might  have  pre- 
dicted such  a  religious  revival  as  would  loosen  the 
tightness  of  confessional  bonds.  In  the  middle  of  the 
last  century  there  came  such  a  renewal  of  the  church's 
life.  State-Churchman  and  Dissenter,  Calvinist  and 
Arminian,  alike  shared  in  its  blessings.  Though  its 
results  are  gathered  into  organized  form  in  one 
ecclesiastical  communion,  it  was  limited  to  no  one. 
Its  first  effect  was,  through  increase  of  Catholicity, 
to  weaken  the  binding  power  of  separative  dogmas. 
I  may  be  allowed,  I  trust,  in  this  presence,  to  quote 
one  of  the  leaders  of  the  Evangelical  movement,  John 
Wesley.  In  a  letter  to  a  friend  he  writes :  "  You 
have  admirably  expressed  what  I  mean  by  an  opin- 
ion, as  contradistinguished  from  an  essential  doctrine. 
Whatever  is  compatible  with  love  to  Christ  and  a 
work  of  grace  is  an  opinion."  [Journal,  May  16, 
1765.]  And  again:  "I  am  sick  of  opinions.  I  am 
weary  to  bear  them.  My  soul  loathes  this  frothy 
food.     Give  me  solid  and  substantial  religion.     Give 


/ 


184       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

me  an  humble,  gentle  lover  of  God  and  man,  a  man  full 
of  mercy  and  good  fruits,  without  partiality  and  with- 
out hypocrisy ;  a  man  laying  himself  out  in  the  work 
of  faith,  the  patience  of  hope,  and  the  labor  of  love. 
Let  my  soul  be  with  these  Christians,  wheresoever 
they  are,  and  whatsoever  opinion  they  are  of."  [A 
Further  Appeal  to  Men  of  Eeason  and  Eeligion,  sec. 
IV.  par.  10.]  Once  more,  for  the  words  of  this  teacher, 
though  spoken  more  than  one  hundred  and  thirty 
years  ago,  singularly  coincide  with  the  temper  of  our 
times.  "It  is  a  poor  excuse  to  say,  '0,  but  the  people 
are  brought  into  several  erroneous  opinions.'  It  mat- 
ters not  a  straw  whether  they  are  or  not  ( I  speak  of 

-  such  opinions  as  do  not  touch  the  foundations) ;  it 
is  scarcely  worth  while  to  spend  ten  words  about  it. 
Whether  they  embrace  this  religious  opinion  or  that 
is  no  more  concern  to  me  than  whether  the}^  embrace 

■  this  or  that  system  of  astronomy.  Are  they  brought 
to  holy  tempers  and  holy  lives  ?  This  is  mine,  and 
should  be  your  inquiry  ;  since  on  this  both  social  and 
personal  happiness  depend,  —  happiness,  temporal 
and  eternal."  [  A  Further  Appeal  to  Men  of  Eeason 
and  Eeligion,  sec.  IV.  par.  14.]  Thus  we  may  say 
that  one  of  the  early  fruits  of  the  Evangelical  revival 
was  a  discrimination  between  the  essential  and  the 
unessential  in  dogma  ;  between  the  credenda  and  the 
cogitanda  between  those  facts  of  the  creed  which 
minister  more  directly  to  the  life,  and  those  which, 
whether  determined  in  one  way  or  another,  leave  the 
life  untouched. 

There  has  run  parallel  with  this  practical  revival 


OLD   AND   NEW   THEOLOGIES.  185 

a  corresponding  movement  of  religious  philosophy. 
Schleiermacher,  who  drew  his  religions  life  from  Mo- 
ra vianism,  lays  down  the  principle  "  that  the  essence;< 
of  religion  is  not  knowledge,  but  feeling.  He  defines 
religion  to  be  rooted  in  the  absolute  feeling  of  de- 
pendence, and  of  a  conscious  relationship  to  God 
originating  immediately  from  it."  The  Christian  re- 
ligion is  that  in  which  the  sense  of  dependence 
is  accompanied  by  the  consciousness  of  redemption 
through  the  merits  of  Christ.  The  feeling  of  de- 
pendence becomes  in  the  Christian  religion  a  feeling 
of  dependence  on  an  infinite  Saviour.  Grant,  if  you 
please,  that  Schleiermacher  fell  into  the  error  of 
making  the  Christian  consciousness  a  primary  source 
of  doctrine.  Grant,  if  you  please,  that  this  error,  by 
setting  aside  the  Divine  Word,  ends  in  the  corruption 
of  the  Christian  consciousness  itself,  yet  the  principle 
can  be  held  with  a  full  recognition  of  the  supreme 
authority  of  tlie  Scriptures  in  matters  of  belief  I  for 
one  can,  therefore,  fully  agree  with  Yan  Oosterzee, 
when  he  says :  "  Only  where  objective  truth  finds  a 
point  of  contact  in  the  subjective  consciousness  does 
it  become  the  spiritual  property  of  mankind  and  can 
it  thus  be  properly  understood  and  valued.  So  far, 
and  so  far  only,  does  the  Christian  consciousness  de- 
serve a  place  amon^the  sources  of  dogmatics.  But 
since  the  doctrine  of  salvation  can  be  derived  neither 
from  reason  nor  from  feeling  nor  from  conscience, 
and  the  internal  consciousness  only  attests  and 
confirms  the  truth,  after  having  learned  it  from 
Scripture,  this  last   must   always   be  valued   as  the 


186       CHKIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

principal  source."     [Christian  Dogmatics,  Vol.  I.  sec. 
10.] 

If  there  are  Scripture  truths  capable  of  such  subjec- 
tive attestation,  then  they  form  an  important  part  of 
the  whole  body  of  dogma;  they  furnish  a  common 
standing  ground  for  Christians  of  diverse  confessions ; 
nay,  more,  their  coming  forward  into  prominence  must 
loosen  the  hold  of  the  differentiating  dogmas  of  the 
churches  upon  the  people.  In  order  that  this  point 
of  attestation  may  be  made  clear,  let  Van  Oosterzee 
be  quoted  again :  "  So  long  as  I  do  not  consciously 
accept  a  truth  for  myself,  it  remains  a  truth,  external 
to  and  above  me,  but  is  not  a  truth  for  me  and  in  me. 
And,  therefore,  the  gospel  looks  for  a  point  of  union 
in  man,  and  finds  in  it  the  highest  aspirations  of  his 
heart,  intellect,  and  conscience.  Where  it  is  faith- 
fully accepted,  a  spiritual  agreement  springs  up,  and 
consequently  an  inner  consciousness  of  truth.  This 
consciousness  of  experience  not  only  may  but  must  be 
reckoned  among  the  sources  of  our  knowledge.  Where 
it  is  utterly  wanting,  there  the  most  accurate  knowl- 
edge deserves  only  the  name  of  dead  knowledge.  A 
man's  own  experience  leads  to  much  deeper  insight  of 
things  than  the  best  attested  testimony."  [Christian 
Dogmatics,  Vol.  I.  sec.  10,  par.  3.]  Morrell,  the  author 
of  the  "  History  of  Philosophy  in  ^le  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury," and  of  the  "  Philosophy  of  Religion,"  recognizes 
this  attesting  power  of  the  Christian  consciousness, 
and  finds  in  the  neglect  of  it  the  source  of  rationalism. 
As  this  is  a  point  collateral  to  the  subject  of  discussion, 
he  may  be  cited  here.     "  The  only  distinct  idea,"  says 


OLD   AND   NEW  THEOLOGIES.  187 

Morrell,  "  which  I  am  able  to  attach  to  the  term  Ea- 
tioualism,  is  the  effort  to  reduce  the  whole  essence  of 
Christianity  to  a  logical  or  scientific  product,  and  the 
denial  of  there  being  anything  contained  in  it,  beyond 
the  facts  which  actually  are,  or  which  can  be  contained 
in  a  connected  series  of  propositions.  The  nationalist 
begins  by  laying  down  his  propositions  in  approved 
form ;  he  goes  on  next  to  deduce  certain  conclusions 
from  them ;  and  then  follows  up  his  train  of  reasons, 
step  by  step,  until  he  has  brought  his  entire  faith  into 
a  complete  logical  system.  This  system,  according  to 
his  view,  is  Christianity ;  the  profession  of  its  truth 
is  the  profession  of  Christianity ;  and  to  believe  the 
propositions  in  question  is  to  be  a  Christian.  To  me 
Christianity  in  its  essence  appears  a  deep  inward-life 
of  the  soul,  —  a  life  which  cannot  be  accounted  for  by 
any  scientific  analysis,  which  cannot  be  expressed  in 
any  number  of  propositions,  but  which  in  its  evidences, 
in  its  conceptions,  in  its  holy  impulses  and  anticipa- 
tions, lies  quite  beyond  the  region  of  the  logical  under- 
standing. If  I  possess  the  Christian  life,  I  have  the 
witness  of  the  truth  within  me.  If  I  possess  it  not,  I 
may,  it  is  true,  possess  a  system  of  formal  doctrine ; 
but  that  system,  as  it  appears  to  the  logical  faculty, 
has  much  the  same  resemblance  to  Christianity  itself 
as  a  skeleton  has  to  a  living  man."  [Philosophy  of 
Eeligion,  Preface,  pp.  16,  17.]  If  this  be  true,  Ra- 
tionalism is  the  divorce  of  the  heart  from  the  head  in 
theology. 

One  of  the  great  teachers  of  our  age,  Neander,  has 
applied  this  living  principle  to  the  interpretation  of 


188       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

church  history,  and  thereby  has  reorganized  that  de- 
partment of  theology.  To  his  mind  the  history  of  the 
church  is  before  all  else  the  exhibition  of  Divine  power, 
in  the  unfolding  of  the  work  of  redemption,  and  thus 
becomes  "  a  school  of  Christian  experience,  a  voice 
sounding  through  the  ages,  of  instruction,  of  doctrine 
and  reproof,  for  all  who  are  disposed  to  listen."  "  The 
theology  of  the  heart "  is  that  to  which  alone  he  looks 
for  the  pacification  of  the  clashing  confessions  of  the 
fatherland,  and  the  victory  of  Christian  truth  over 
rationalistic  unbelief.  I  beg  attention  to  his  weighty 
testimony :  "  When,  at  the  commencement  of  my 
labors,"  he  writes,  "  I  dedicated  my. work  to  the  friend 
who  was  about  to  leave  me,  I  affixed  to  it  the  motto 
of  our  common  theology  and  of  this  exhibition  of  his- 
tory :  '  Pectus  est,  quod  theologum  facit.'  We  need 
not  be  ashamed  of  this  maxim ;  shame  rather  to  those 
who  were  bold  enough  to  ridicule  it.  It  was  the 
watchword  of  these  men  who  called  forth  theology 
from  the  dead  forms  of  scholasticism  to  the  living 
spirit  of  God's  Word."  [Preface  to  General  Church 
History ;  second  edition.]  And  again  he  writes : 
"As  for  my  relation  to  all  who  hold  the  con- 
viction that  faith  in  Jesus,  the  Saviour  of  sinful 
humanity,  as  it  has  shown  itself  since  the  first  found- 
ing of  the  Christian  Church  to  be  the  fountain  of 
Divine  life,  will  prove  itself  the  same  to  the  end  of 
time,  and  that  from  this  faith  a  new  creation  will  arise 
in  the  Christian  Church,  and  in  this  part  of  the  world, 
which  has  been  preparing  amidst  the  storms  of  spring, 
—  to  all  such  persons  I  hope  to  be  bound  by  the  bond 


/)LD   AND   NEW   THEOLOGIES.  189 

of  Christian  fellowship.  But  I  cannot  agree  with  the 
conviction  of  those  among  them  who  think  that  this 
new  creation  will  only  be  a  repetition  of  what  took 
place  in  the  sixteenth  or  seventeenth  century,  and 
that  the  whole  dogmatic  system,  and  the  entire  mode 
of  contemplating  human  and  divine  things,  must  re- 
turn as  it  then  existed."  [Preface  to  History  of  Train- 
ing and  Planting  the  Christian  Church.] 

What  dogmatic  changes  Neander  anticipated,  he 
has  nowhere  placed  on  record ;  but  he  doubtless  fore- 
saw that  the  "  theology  of  the  heart "  would  lift  into 
greater  importance  certain  vital  doctrines  of  theology, 
and  reduce  the  importance  of  others  which  have  thus 
far  stood  in  the  foreground  of  the  confessions.  Dr. 
Philip  Schaff,  a  pupil  of  Neander,  who  worthily  illus- 
trates the  catholic  spirit  of  his  teacher,  discussed  in 
1877,  before  the  Presbyterian  Alliance,  the  desirable- 
ness of  a  new  confession  of  faith  for  the  great  body  of 
Eeformed  churches.  Let  me  quote  his  words :  "  The 
preparation  of  such  a  confession  would  afford  an  ex- 
cellent opportunity  to  simplify  and  popularize  the 
Eeformed  system  of  doctrine,  to  utter  a  protest 
against  the  peculiar  dangers  and  errors  of  our  age, 
and  to  exhibit  the  fraternal  attitude  of  this  Alliance 
to  the  Evangelical  churches,  which  have  sprung  up 
since  the  Eeformation,  and  have  been  blessed  of  God. 
It  ought  to  be  truly  evangelical,  —  evangelical-catho- 
lic in  spirit.  A  confession  which  would  intensify 
Presbyterianism  and  loosen  the  ties  which  unite  us 
to  other  branches  of  Christ's  church,  I  would  regard 
as  a  calamity.     We  want  a  wall   to   keep  off  the 


190       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

wolves,  and  not  a  fence  to  divide  the  sheep  ;  we  want 
a  declaration  of  union,  not  a  platform  of  disunion." 
[The  Harmony  of  the  Reformed  Confession,  pp.  60, 
61.]  The  following  passage  is  entirely  in  the  line  of 
the  argument  of  this  lecture  :  "  No  Reformed  Synod 
(at  least  on  the  Continent )  could  now  pass  the  rigorous 
canons  of  Dort  against  Arminianism,  which,  after  a 
temporary  defeat,  has  silently  leavened  the  national 
church  of  Holland,  and  which,  through  the  great 
Methodist  revival,  has  become  one  of  the  most  power- 
ful converting  agencies  in  England  and  America. 
The  five  knotty  points  of  Calvinism  have  lost  their 
point,  and  have  been  smoothed  off  by  God's  own 
working  in  the  history  of  the  church."  [  Harmony  of 
Reformed  Confessions,  pp.  49,  50.] 

Thus  we  have  shown  that  the  Evangelical  revival 
has  changed  the  relative  importance  of  dogmas,  that 
it  has  found  a  secondary  basis  in  a  philosophy 
of  religion,  that  it  has  led  to  the  desire  for  a  closer 
doctrinal  consensus  among  all  the  churches  that  hold 
to  the  consciousness  of  redemption  through  faith  in 
Christ  as  the  vital  fact  of  Christianity.  The  time 
when  such  a  desire  is  likely  to  be  realized  is  no  doubt 
far  off;  but  its  expression  is  not  a  sign  of  the  de- 
cadence of  the  churches,  it  is  a  symptom  of  growth. 
As  for  these  uneasy,  unstable,  unsettled  teachers,  who 
are  blown  about  by  every  theological  wind,  who  can- 
not be  found  to-day  where  they  were  yesterday,  and 
who  will  not  be  found  to-morrow  where  they  are  to- 
day, and  that  other  class,  who  court  popularity  by 
surrendering  what  they  ought  to  defend,  who  are  all 


OLD   AND   NEW   THEOLOGIES.  191 

things  to  all  men  in  a  sense  of  which  Paul  never 
dreamt,  —  tlie  less  said  about  them  the  better. 

It  remains  to  notice  the  reactions  against  the  Evan- 
gelical movement,  that  has  now  maintained  itself  for 
nearly  one  hundred  and  fifty  years. 

1.  The  Anglo-Catholic  revival.  This  originated  in 
the  perception  that  the  Evangelical  movement  neces- 
sarily meant  the  downfall  of  sacramental  Christian- 
ity, and  the  relaxation  of  what  are  known  as  strict 
church  principles.  The  universal  priesthood  of  the 
people,  which  is  an  outcome  of  the  pure  Evangelical 
faith,  implies  the  extinction  of  the  priestly  conception 
of  the  ministry.  John  Henry  Newman,  the  leader 
of  the  Anglo-Catholics,  has  stated  very  candidly  the 
purpose  cherished  by  himself  and  his  associates. 
"  My  battle,"  he  says,  "  was  with  liberalism ;  by  lib- 
eralism I  mean  the  anti-dogmatic  principle  and  its 
developments.  From  tlie  age  of  fifteen,  dogma  has 
been  the  fundamental  principle  of  my  religion ;  I 
cannot  enter  into  the  idea  of  any  other  religion ;  re- 
ligion as  a  mere  sentiment  is  to  me  a  dream  and  a 
mockery."  [Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua,  pp.  95,  96.] 
"  As  to  the  high  church  and  the  low  church,  I  thought 
that  one  had  not  much  more  of  a  logical  basis  than 
the  other ;  while  I  had  a  thorough  contempt  for  the 
Evangelical."  [Apologia,  p.  91.]  And  again:  "The 
vital  question  was,  How  were  we  to  keep  the  church 
from  being  liberalized  ?  There  was  such  apathy  on 
the  subject  in  some  quarters  and  such  imbecile  alarm 
in  others.  .  .  .  The  Bishop  of  London  of  the  day,  an 
active  and  open-hearted  man,  had  for  years  been  en- 


>( 


192       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

gaged  in  diluting  the  high  orthodoxy  of  the  chnrch, 
by  the  introduction  of  the  Evangelical  body  into 
places  of  influence  and  trust."  [Apologia,  p.  79.] 
Newman  had  the  penetration  to  perceive  that  Evan- 
gelical principles,  when  carried  into  civil  life,  cre- 
ated political  liberalism,  and  this  aroused  in  his 
mind  a  strong  repugnance  to  the  Evangelical  faith. 
Speaking  of  his  life  in  1832,  he  writes :  "  Shortly  be- 
fore there  had  been  a  revolution  in  France  :  the  Bour- 
bons had  been  dismissed  ;  and  I  believed  that  it  was 
unchristian  for  nations  to  cast  off  their  governors." 
[Apologia,  p.  79.]  So  intense  was  his  dislike  of  the 
progress  of  civil  liberty  on  the  Continent  of  Europe, 
that  he  says  of  himself  in  this  year  :  "  It  was  the  suc- 
cess of  the  liberal  cause  that  fretted  me  inwardly.  I 
became  fierce  against  its  instruments  and  its  manifes- 
tations. A  French  vessel  was  at  Algiers ;  I  would 
not  even  look  at  the  tricolor.  On  my  return,  though 
forced  to  stop  a  day  at  Paris,  I  kept  indoors  the  whole 
time,  and  all  I  saw  of  the  beautiful  city  was  what  I 
saw  from  the  diligence."     [p.  82.] 

This  is  the  explanation  of  the  motive  of  the  Anglo- 
Catholic  revival  by  one  of  its  leaders.  To  set  up 
a  barrier  against  the  Evangelical  movement  was  a 
brave  undertaking;  and  the  undertaking  could  not 
have  fallen  into  more  capable  hands.  Ardent,  richly 
cultivated  in  classical  lore  if  not  in  theology,  clear- 
sighted enough  to  perceive  the  nature  of  the  battle 
they  fought,  honest  to  the  core,  they  did  all  that  in- 
tellectual energy,  combined  with  the  pleading  of  the 
authority  of  patristic  antiquity,  could  do.     They  have 


OLD   AND   NEW  THEOLOGIES.  193 

appeared,  and  from  Protestantism  at  least  some  of 
them  have  disappeared,  and  the  Evangelical  move- 
ment still  moves  on. 

2.  The  Agnostic  reaction,  which  limits  the  knowl- 
edge to  the  realm  of  sensible  experience,  and  denies 
the  possibility  of  knowing  the  supernatural.  It  sub- 
stitutes the  knowledge  of  law  for  the  consciousness 
of  redemption.  This  system  carries  us  to  the  polar 
zone  of  thought,  and  leaves  us  there 

* '  To  starve  in  ice, 
Immovable,  infixed,  and  frozen  round." 

To  others  belongs  the  task  of  dealing  metaphysi- 
cally with  the  Agnostic  system  ;  it  is  only  in  place 
here  to  notice  it  as  one  of  the  reactions  of  the  age,  in 
which  the  possibility  of  religion  is  denied.  But  if  I 
am  to  do  no  more  than  learn  the  laws  of  the  universe, 
there  is  a  mistake  in  the  make-up  of  my  constitu- 
tion. I  ought  to  have  been  all  brain.  The  study  of 
these  generalizations  of  sensible  experience  which  we 
call  laws  can  never  dry  a  tear,  never  heal  a  heart- 
ache, never  ease  the  consciousness  of  sin  which  we 
carry  with  us,  never  relieve  the  sense  of  guilt.  My 
heart  and  my  flesh  cry  out  for  the  living  God,  and  I 
am  told  to  rest  in  abstract  law  ;  that  is  to  give  me  a 
stone  when  I  ask  for  bread.  They  who  speak  to  me 
thus  tell  me  only  half  the  truth.  I  would  rise  above 
law  to  One  who  is  heart  to  my  heart,  love  to  my 
love ;  who  has  in  him  an  infinite  pity  and  readiness  to 
help.  The  Agnostic  reaction  denies  the  best  part  of 
my  nature  all  its  rights.  It  cannot  last  long,  for  the 
imperishable  wants  of  man  demand  a  positive  faith. 

13 


X 


194       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

3.  The  last  reaction  against  the  religious  life  of  the 
age  is  the  Gospel  of  Culture,  so  eloquently  proclaimed 
V  by  Matthew  Arnold.  But  this  gospel  is,  in  its  last 
analysis,  a  Gospel  of  Selfishness.  Here  the  law  is 
self-activity;  in  the  Christian  religion  the  primary 
law  is  recipiency.  Here  man's  centre  is  in  himself ; 
in  religion,  he  is  taken  away  from  himself,  and  his 
centre  is  Jesus  Christ.  The  goal  of  culture  is  self- 
developed  perfection  ;  the  goal  of  religion  is  the  out- 
growing of  our  imperfection  through  the  vigor  of 
One  greater  than  we  are  imparted  to  us.  The  spirit 
of  culture  is  independence ;  the  spirit  of  religion  is 
dependence.  The  tendency  of  the  Gospel  of  Culture 
to  an  absorbing  self-consciousness  has  been  clearly 
pointed  out  by  Principal  Shairp.  "Its  starting- 
point,"  to  cite  his  statement,  "  is  the  idea  of  perfect- 
ing self,  and  though,  as  it  gradually  evolves,  it  tries 
to  forget  self  and  to  include  quite  other  elements,  yet 
it  never  succeeds  in  getting  clear  of  the  taint  of  self- 
reference,  with  which  it  set  out.  While  making  this 
objection,  I  do  not  forget  that  Mr.  Arnold,  in  drawing 
out  his  views,  proposes  as  the  end  of  culture  to  make 
reason  and  the  kingdom  of  God  prevail ;  that  he  sees 
clearly  and  insists  strongly  that  an  isolated  self- 
culture  is  impossible,  that  we  cannot  make  progress 
towards  perfection  ourselves  unless  we  strive  ear- 
nestly to  carry  our  fellow-men  along  with  us.  Still, 
may  it  not  be  said  that  these  unselfish  elements  — 
the  desire  for  others'  good,  the  desire  to  advance  God's 
kingdom  on  earth  —  are  in  this  theory  awakened,  not 
simply  for  their  own  sakes,  not  chiefly  because  they 


OLD   AND   NEW  THEOLOGIES.  195 

are  good  in  themselves,  but  because  they  are  clearly 
discerned  to  be  necessary  to  our  self-perfection,  ele- 
ments apart  from  which  this  cannot  exist  ?  And  so 
it  comes  that  culture,  though  made  our  end  never  so 
earnestly,  cannot  shelter  a  man  from  thoughts  about 
himself;  cannot  free  him  from  that  which  all  must 
feel  to  be  fatal  to  high  character,  —  continual  self- 
consciousness."  [Culture  and  Eeligion,  pp.  92-93.] 
But  all  the  reactions  of  the  age,  the  Agnostic,  the 
Sacraraentarian,  the  Eationalist,  only  serve  as  a 
background  to  show  more  clearly  the  bright  light  of 
the  Evangelical  movement.  Out  of  it  what  is  most 
characteristic  of  the  religion  of  our  time  has  grown. 
It  waits  for  a  historian,  but  can  wait  till  its  work  is 
completed  in  the  renovation  of  theology  itself.  That 
theology  will  be  pervaded  throughout  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  redemption.  When  the  song  of  the 
freed  slave,  "  I  'm  redeemed,  I  'm  redeemed,"  floating 
over  the  land,  attests  the  power  of  the  gospel,  surely 
we  in  the  centres  of  culture  need  not  be  ashamed 
to  declare  that  we  are  determined  to  know  nothing 
among  men  "  save  Jesus  Christ  and  him  crucified." 


VIII. 

FACTS    AS    TO    DIVORCE    IN    NEW 
ENGLAND. 

Bv  KEY.  SAMUEL   W.  DIKE. 


VIII. 

FACTS    AS    TO    DIVORCE    IN    NEW 
ENGLAND. 

By  rev.  SAMUEL  W.  DIKE. 

^  I  ^HE  two  words  most  significant  of  our  American 
-*-  life  are  probably  business  and  home.  Business 
rests  directly  upon  the  institution  of  property,  and 
the  home  upon  that  of  marriage.  Sir  James 
Mackintosh  said  :  "  Almost  all  the  relative  duties  of 
human  life  will  be  found,  more  immediately  or  more 
remotely,  to  arise  out  of  the  two  great  institutions 
of  property  and  marriage ;  they  constitute,  preserve, 
and  improve  society;  upon  their  gradual  improve- 
ment depends  the  progressive  civilization  of  man- 
kind ;  on  them  rests  the  whole  order  of  civil  life." 
[Law  of  Nature  and  Nations,  p.  76.]  It  may  be 
said  further,  that  since,  with  most  people,  the  home 
is  the  great  incentive  to  labor,  and  to  the  accumu- 
lation of  its  fruits  in  capital ;  so  in  the  last  analysis 
marriage  is  the  fundamental  institution  of  modem 
society.  "  The  contract  of  marriage,"  wrote  the 
learned  Story,  "  is  the  most  important  of  all  human 
transactions.    It  is  the  very  basis  of  civilized  society." 


200       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

The  President  takes  the  same  ground  in  his  last 
annual  message,  when  he  says,  *'  The  sanctity  of  mar- 
riage and  the  family  relation  are  the  corner-stone  of 
our  American  society  and  civilization."  "  The  stability 
of  the  family,"  writes  an  historian,  "is  the  surest 
criterion  of  the  moral  character  of  an  age."  Whether, 
then,  you  come  as  men  of  business,  as  citizens  or 
as  the  friends  of  good  morals,  as  well  as  Christians,  to 
listen  to  the  facts  as  to  divorce  in  New  England,  you 
are  occupied  with  a  topic  second  in  importance  —  let 
me  say  —  to  no  other  moral  question  discussed  on 
this  platform. 

I  am  to  give  the  facts  for  New  England  only. 
This  is  not  a  serious  limitation.  For  the  New 
England  idea,  whether  we  find  it  East  or  West, 
is  the  most  representative  idea  of  our  country,  and 
any  study  of  it  is  practically  a  study  of  American 
principles.  It  conquered  at  Appomattox.  It  is,  and 
will  be,  at  least  for  four  years  longer,  represented  in 
the  chief  executive  office  of  the  nation.  But  it  has 
more  work  to  do.  East  and  West,  North  and  South. 
For  this  work  it  needs  to  be  watched,  and  to  receive 
from  time  to  time  fresh  power  from  its  original 
sources. 

Now,  divorce  is  a  New  England  idea,  —  not  the 
New  England  idea,  but  rather  a  Yankee  notion,  ap- 
parently indigenous  to  the  soil  of  Connecticut,  —  from 
which  it  has  spread,  with  other  and  better  notions, 
over  large  sections  of  the  United  States.  Let  us  look 
at  it  with  neither  pessimistic  nor  yet  with  optimistic 
eyes,  but  with  that  manly  New  England  courage  that 


DIVORCE   IN   NEW   ENGLAND.  201 

is  ready  to  see  its  worst  self  to-day  that  it  may  be 
better  to-morrow.  The  merest  outline  only  can  be 
given  in  an  hour,  and  I  try  to  seize  on  such  points  as, 
it  seems  to  me,  will  best  give  you  an  idea  of  the  facts 
and  the  tield  they  cover,  leaving  out  a  hundred  things 
that  ought  to  be  said.  Unrighteous  divorce,  in  its 
destruction  of  the  marriage  bond,  destroys  the  family 
and  necessarily  affects  the  three  great  ends  of  mar- 
riage and  the  family;  namely,  the  preservation  of 
chastity,  the  giving  of  pure  life  to  the  world,  and  the 
help  of  the  individual  to  the  highest  perfection  and  to 
the  greatest  social  power,  as  a  preparation  for  and  fore- 
taste of  the  life  to  come.  What,  then,  are  the  facts  ? 
First,  as  to  divorces.  Beginning  with  Connecticut, 
we  find  that  Benjamin  Trumbull,  in  1785,  mourned 
that  439  divorces  had  taken  place  in  Connecticut 
within  a  century,  and  that  all  but  50  had  occurred 
in  the  last  fifty  years.  About  twenty  years  later, 
when  the  corrupt  influence  of  French  infidelity  had 
reached  its  height,  President  Dwight  was  alarmed 
that  there  was  one  divorce  to  every  hundred  mar- 
riages. The  increase  of  the  evil,  however,  seems 
nearly  checked  until  1843,  when  "  habitual  intemper- 
ance "  and  "  intolerable  cruelty  "  were  added  to  the 
two  existing  causes  for  divorce.  Even  then  the  in- 
crease was  small.  But  in  1849  several  causes,  in- 
cluding the  notorious  "  omnibus  clause,"  were  added, 
making  nine  in  all,  and  jurisdiction  was  taken  from 
the  legislature  and  given  wholly  to  the  courts.  That- 
year  divorces  numbered  94 ;  the  next  year,  129  ;  and 
in  1864,  426.     Then  for  fifteen  years  they  averaged 


202       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

446  annually,  varying  less  from  year  to  year  than 
the  reported  births  or  marriages  or  deaths.  During 
this  period  the  ratio  of  divorces  to  marriages  was 
1  to  10.4.  The  repeal  of  the  "  omnibus  clause  '*  in 
1878  reduced  the  divorces  of  the  next  year  to  316. 
Another  slight  change  in  the  law  for  the  better  was 
secured  a  year  ago. 

Vermont  grants  divorces  for  six  causes.  There 
were  94  divorces  granted  in  1860,  and  from  the  close 
of  the  war  they  increased  to  197  in  1878,  with  the 
ratio  to  marriages  of  1  to  14.  That  year  an  amend- 
ment to  the  laws  resulted  in  a  reduction  of  divorces 
in  the  year  following  to  126. 

Ehode  Island  grants  about  180  annually,  and  her 
ratio  is  1  to  13. 

New  Hampshire  prints  no  statistics  either  of  divorce 
or  marriage,  but  it  has  been  found  that  there  were 
159  divorces  in  the  entire  State  in  1870,  240  in  1875, 
and  241  in  1878.  Three  counties,  that  had  only  18 
in  1840  and  21  in  1850,  granted  40  in  1860  and  96 
in  1878.  There  are  fourteen  causes  for  divorce,  but 
no  more  inclusive,  probably,  than  those  of  most  other 
States.! 

I  do  not  know  that  the  divorces  of  Maine  have 
ever  been  reported.     I  have  secured  an  examination 

1  The  number  of  causes  for  divorce  is  a  very  uncertain  guide  to 
the  facilities  afforded  by  the  laws  of  a  State.  Massachusetts  has 
more  causes  than  Maine,  and  yet  parties  go  from  the  former  to  the 
latter  State  for  divorce.  Mucli  depends  upon  the  phraseology  of  the 
law.  Of  cour.se  some  of  those  causes,  like  nullity  and  bigamy,  are 
not,  strictly  speaking,  causes  for  divorce  at  all.  Though  classified 
as  such,  they  are  really  reasons  for  annulling  the  marriage. 


DIVORCE  IN   NEW   ENGLAND.  203 

of  the  county  records  in  that  State  giving  the  divorces 
of  the  sixteen  counties  of  the  State  for  the  year  1878. 
In  these  sixteen  counties  there  were  478  divorces  in 
that  year.  It  is  also  found  that  in  the  five  counties 
giving  the  number  for  1880  there  was  an  increase 
of  more  than  one  third  in  the  latter  year, —  from  166 
to  223.1  *Penobscot  County  granted  84  divorces  last 
year. 

And  now  take  Massachusetts,  which  I  have  reserved 
to  the  last,  because  she  is  the  heart  of  New  England, 
and  for  the  facilities  she  affords  for  studying  this 
whole  problem.  This  State,  following  closely  English 
law,  granted  divorce  for  only  two  causes  until  1860. 
That  year  there  were  243  divorces,  or  1  to  51  mar- 
riages. Then,  by  a  series  of  acts  passed,  chiefly  in 
1860,  '67,  '73,  and  '77,  the  causes  for  absolute  divorce 
became  nine,  Massachusetts  copying  a  Connecticut 
vice  just  as  Connecticut  began  to  forsake  it.  In  1866 
there  were  392  divorces  ;  in  1870,  449  ;  andnn  1878, 
600.  The  ratio  to  marriages,  1  to  51  in  1860,  became 
1  to  21.4  in  1878.  It  is  probable  that  in  Massachu- 
setts the  increase  still  goes  on. 

If,  now,  we  sum  up  for  New  England,  there  were 
in  the  year  of  grace  1878  in  Maine,  478  divorces  ;  in 
New  Hampshire,  241;  in  Vermont,  197;  in  Massa- 
chusetts, 600 ;  in  Connecticut,  401 ;  and  in  Khode 
Island,  196;  making  a  total  of  2,113,  and  a  larger 
ratio  in  proportion  to  the  population  than  in  France 
in  the  days  of  the  revolution,  though  far  less  than 

1  Complete  returns  for  1880  show  that  there  were  510  divorces 
granted  in  the  entire  State  that  year. 


204       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

in  the  city  of  Paris.  In  France,  the  ratio  of  sep- 
arations to  marriages  latterly  is  about  1  to  150 ;  in 
Belgium,  of  divorces  to  marriages,  1  to  270,  with  a  few- 
separations  ;  and  in  England,  of  petitions  for  both 
divorce  and  separation,  1  to  300.  On  the  basis  of 
population  by  the  present  census  there  was  one  di- 
vorce to  every  1,357  inhabitants  in  Maine ;  one  to 
819  in  Penobscot  County,  the  seat  of  a  theologi- 
cal seminary  ;  one  to  every  1,439  in  New  Hampshire ; 
one  to  every  1,687  in  Vermont;  one  to  every  2,971  in' 
Massachusetts ;  one  to  every  1,553  in  Connecticut ; 
and  one  to  every  1,411  in  Rhode  Island.  But  no 
State  except  Maine  is  likely  to  have  a  larger  divorce 
rate  than  Massachusetts,  unless  the  laws  and  discus- 
sion speedily  check  the  evil,  for  the  reason  that  the 
changes  in  the  law  have  not  had  time  to  produce 
their  full  effects. 

But  the  Catholic  marriages  are,  in  four  States, 
twenty-seven  per  cent  of  the  whole.^  Assuming, 
what  is  very  nearly  true,  that  there  are  no  divorces 
among  these,  the  ratio  of  divorces  to  marriages  among 
Protestants  is  1  to  11.7  for  the  four  States  together; 
it  being  1  to  15  in  Massachusetts,  1  to  13  in  Ver- 
mont, 1  to  9  in  Rhode  Island,  and  1  in  less  than  8  in 
Connecticut. 

But  what  of  divorce  in  the  West  ?  Has  not  this 
practice,  in  going  West  with  the  New-Englander,  run 
into  greater  extremes  ?     Few  States,  if  any,  west  of 

1  In  1878  the  Catholic  marriages  were  31  per  cent  of  the  wliole 
number  of  marriages  in  Massachusetts,  24  per  cent  in  Connecticut, 
28  per  cent  in  Rhode  Island,  and  12  per  cent  in  Vermont. 


DIVORCE  IN   NEW   ENGLAND.  205 

Ohio,  collect  statistics  of  divorce.  In  Ohio,  the  ratio 
for  many  years  averaged  1  to  25,  and  now  it  is  about 
1  to  18.  Indiana  has  changed  her  laws  for  the  bet- 
ter, while  Illinois  has,  it  is  said,  adopted  better  forms 
of  procedure.  No  city  has  had  a  worse  reputation 
in  divorce  than  Chicago.  Yet  the  records  c^  Cook 
County,  with  a  population  of  about  600,000,  for  the 
five  years  1875-79,  show  a  ratio  of  divorce  suits 
hegun  to  marriages  licenses  taken  out  of  1  to  9.4.  But 
for  the  year  1875  it  was  found  that  one  fifth  of  the 
petitions  heard  were  denied.  Making  this  allow- 
ance, —  and  the  more  strict  practice  of  latter  years 
fully  justifies  it,  —  the  ratio  becomes  1  to  12.  Chi- 
cago is  not  as  bad  as  Hartford  or  New  Haven.^ 

So  this  wretched  business  goes  on,  apparently 
wherever  New  England  people  are  found,  and  it  seems 
to  spread  elsewhere  in  some  measure.  Yet  it  exists 
only  where  laws  render  it  possible.  But  loose  laws 
and  loose  court  practice,  of  which  there  is  too  much 
in  certain  courts,  —  chiefly  perhaps  in  Maine  and  Con- 
necticut, —  cannot  account  for  all  of  this  increase. 
New  Hampshire  is  in  point.  There  has  been  no 
change  in  the  .law  there,  of  any  account,  since  1854, 
and,  I  am  told,  very  little  for  nearly  a  century.  Yet 
the  increase  is  as  marked  as  in  other  States.  Even  in 
St.  Louis,  where  there  were  few  divorced  until  1876, 
there  were,  it  is  estimated,  430  cases  tried  in  1879, 
and  205  divorces  were  granted  last  year.     "  I  have  as 

1  The  Rev.  Charles  Caverno,  of  Lombard,  IlL,  has  found  that  there 
were  6,603  marriage  licenses  taken  out  in  Cook  County,  111.,  in  1880, 
and  830  divorce  suits  begun.     The  ratio  is  1  to  8. 


206       CHKIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

yet,"  writes  a  correspondent  in  St.  Louis,  "  found  no 
one  who  is  able  to  give  an  explanation  of  the  in- 
crease, beyond  the  fact  that  like  a  deadly  epidemic  it 
began  to  rage  with  greater  violence  about  that  time, 
because  all  the  previous  conditions  of  our  social  life 
had  been  favorable  to  such  an  outbreak."  He  adds  : 
"  You  will  also  discover,  from  the  names,  that  most 
of  the  parties  are  of  foreign  birth."  Yet  in  Boston 
I  find  very  few  unmistakably  foreign  names  on  the 
divorce  docket.  There  are  333  divorces  reported 
for  the  city  of  San  Francisco  in  1880. 

Not  one  fourth  of  these  divorce  cases  are  for  adul- 
tery. Desertion  and  severity  are  the  chief  causes. 
The  courts  are  crowded  with  unhappy  couples,  and 
often  the  cases  are  despatched  with  unseemly  haste. 
A  pastor  once  spoke  to  the  judge  in  the  lull  of  busi- 
ness one  day, —  a  member,  I  think,  of  his  church,  and 
chief  justice  of  the  State.  Another  man  approached. 
"  Excuse  me  a  moment,"  said  the  judge.  In  less  than 
three  minutes  the  judge  turned  to  the  minister  and 
said,  "  Do  you  know  what  I  have  done  ?  I  have 
divorced  a  couple  quicker  than  you  ever  married 
one ! "  There  is  a  daughter  of  a  prosperous  farmer, 
still  a  young  woman,  who  has  been  divorced  from 
three  husbands,  each  of  whom  is  living  and  married 
to  another  wife,  while  she  has  lately  been  married  to 
a  fourth  husband.  Nor  is  this  the  only  or  the  worst 
case  of  the  kind  reported  in  the  State  of  Connecticut. 
Two  Vermonters  deliberately  swapped  wives  by  aid  of 
the  courts.  Young  people  coolly  reckon  on  divorce 
in  contracting  marriage.     A  Vermont  couple  married 


DIVORCE   IN    NEW   ENGLAND.  207 

"  on  trial  for  six  months,"  agreeing  to  get  a  divorce 
"if  either  party  did  not  like."  An  advertisement 
appeared  in  a  Boston  newspaper  for  some  time :  "Di- 
vorces legally  and  quietly  obtained.  Can  pay  by  in- 
stalments." Out  of  seventeen  cases  tried  at  one  term 
of  court  in  Vermont,  in  the  opinion  of  members  of 
the  bar,  all  but  one  were  collusive. 

It  is  said  that  this  is  not  wholly  an  evil.  Said 
a  minority  report  to  the  Massachusetts  Legislature, 
many  years  ago,  it  is  true,  "  The  consequences  of  this 
course  of  legislation,  so  far  as  the  undersigned  can 
judge  of  them,  have  been  to  increase  the  happiness 
of  married  life,  to  promote  lawful  marriages,  and  to 
prevent  licentiousness."  And  this  opinion  is  fre- 
quently expressed  in  newspapers,  and  held  by  many 
very  intelligent  citizens  to-day.  It  has  had  much 
weight  with  legislators. 

This  leads  me  to  present  a  second  class  of  facts, 
not  so  much,  however,  to  refute  this  opinion  as  to 
throw  light  upon  the  whole  discussion.  I  take  Mas- 
sachusetts, because  her  admirable  Bureau  of  Statistics 
gives  facts  not  accessible  in  other  States.  I  find  in 
the  report  of  that  Bureau  for  1880,  that  for  the  twenty 
years  ending  1879  the  population  of  the  State  in- 
creased 50  per  cent.  In  1860,  there  were  12,404 
marriages,  —  the  largest  number  ever  reported  up  to 
tliat  date,  save  once.  The  highest  number  since  is 
16,437,  —  a  gain  of  32  per  cent  only,  while  in  1879 
they  were  only  11  per  cent  more  than  in  1860. 

Take  crime.  The  report  shows  that,  leaving  out  of 
account  the  liquor  cases,  fluctuating  for  obvious  rea- 


208       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

sons,  all  crime  in  the  State  for  twenty  years  increased 
20.4  per  cent,  or  two  fifths  as  fast  as  the  population. 
But  how  is  it  with  the  licentious  crimes  ?  I  can  learn 
of  no  essential  change  in  the  laws  or  in  their  enforce- 
ment, except  that  in  Suffolk  County  the  convictions 
for  keeping  houses  of  ill-fame  for  the  last  five  years 
are  only  two  fifths  the  number  in  the  preceding  five 
(206  to  523),  and  that  the  convictions  for  the  kin- 
dred offence  of  night-walking  have  scarcely  increased. 
Leaving  out  these  two  offences  for  Suffolk  County 
only,  —  as  a  concession,  if  you  wish,  to  increasing 
virtue  in  Boston,  —  and  combining  two  that  belong  to- 
gether, —  fornication  and  lewdness,  —  we  have  these 
results  for  the  entire  State.  Each  of  these  ten  offen- 
ces of  a  licentious  nature  has  steadily  increased  in 
each  quinquennial  period  since  1860,  until  convic- 
tions for  every  one  of  them,  with  a  solitary  excep- 
tion, have  more  than  doubled  in  the  twenty  years, 
while  convictions  for  that  one  have  risen  from  16 
to  28.  The  totals  are,  for  each  five  years:  1860-64, 
719;  1865-69,  851;  1870-74,  1,164;  1875-79, 
1,972.  Note  the  per  cent  of  increase  over  the  pre- 
ceding five  years  in  each  period,  —  18 J,  37,  70. 
While,  then,  crime  generally  has  increased  20.4 
per  cent,  the  population  50  per  cent,  this  class  of 
crimes  has  increased  174  per  cent,  or  eight  times  as 
fast  as  crime  in  general,  and  more  than  three  times 
faster  than  the  population,  and  with  accelerating 
rate. 

I  add  that  the  exceedingly  cautious  report  of  the 
specialist  employed  will  make  Boston  appear  in  the 


DIVORCE   IN   NEW  ENGLAND.  209 

census  as  having  1,770  professional  prostitutes,  not- 
withstanding the  reported  decrease  in  convictions  of 
the  classes  already  named  !  Put  these  facts  alongside 
the  divorce  statistics,  and  keep  it  in  mind  that  this 
increase  of  licentious  offences  is  found  over  nearly 
the  entire  State,  with  little  variation.  It  is  as  notice- 
able in  Berkshire,  Franklin,  and  Plymouth  counties  as 
it  is  in  Suffolk  and  Middlesex.^ 

Add  to  this  the  fact  that  the  number  of  children 
born  out  of  wedlock  in  the  State  has  risen  in  the 
same  period  from  8  in  1,000  to  17,  and  the  most  rapid 
increase  has  been  in  the  last  six  years,  while  in  just 
those  years  England  has  as  rapidly  improved.  And 
so  far  as  I  have  examined  the  few  registration  reports 
of  the  other  States,  I  find  similar  facts,  whose  force, 
however,  is  modified  somewhat  by  the  fact  that 
greater  care  in  securing  returns  tends  to  increase 
the  number  reported  in  later  years. 

You  now  ask,  as  I  did,  do  these  statistics  fairly,  or 
in  any  good  degree  even,  represent  the  condition  of 
things  here  and  all  over  New  England  ?  Are  the 
statistics  given  even  half  true  ?  Is  there  not  a  better 
public  conscience,  a  stricter  enforcement  of  the  laws  ? 
That  I  might  do  a  little  to  meet  this  inquiry,  and 
throw  more  light  if  possible  on  the  general  subject,  I 

1  The  value  of  statistics  of  crime  and  divorce  would  be  greatly- 
enhanced  if  the  States  should  require  the  courts  to  make  record 
in  all  cases  of  convictions  for  crime,  and  divorces  granted,  of  the 
nationality,  residence  by  town  or  city,  age,  number  of  the  marriage 
severed  by  divorce,  and  length  of  time  martied,  with  all  other  social 
facts  that  in  any  way  will  exhibit  the  origin  and  causes  of  crime  and 
divorces.  -.^ 


210       CHEIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

sent  a  list  of  questions  to  a  hundred  or  more  gentle- 
men in  nearly  all  parts  of  'New  England,  mostly 
judges,  state-attorneys,  lawyers,  police  officers,  large 
numbers  of  physicians  and  specialists,  with  a  few 
clergymen.  Nearly  all  responded.  About  seventy 
letters  are  of  value  for  the  purpose  of  classification. 
These  cover  probably  one  hundred  towns  and  cities, 
giving  the  opinions  of  nearly  two  hundred  persons 
who  were  consulted  in  their  preparation.  I  form,  so 
far  as  these  letters  go,  the  opinion  that  there  is 
probably  less  of  open  and  coarse  vice  of  certain  kinds 
in  many  respectable  country  towns  than  there  was 
seventy  or  eighty  years  ago,  —  very  likely  less  than 
fifty  years  ago.  But,  with  this  exception,  which 
covers  a  few  only  of  our  country  towns,  and  occasion- 
ally a  city,  as  correct  a  summary  of  opinion  as  I 
could  give  would  be  like  this  :  In  three  fourths  of  the 
localities  reporting  on  this  point  licentiousness  is  said 
to  be  increasing.  In  nearly  as  many  the  destruction 
of  unborn  life  goes  on  as  fast,  or  faster,  than  ever. 
Physicians  are  very  emphatic  on  this  point,  and  many 
speak  with  great  indignation  of  the  wicked  practices 
of  some  church-members.  In  one  half  the  places 
licentiousness  and  drinking  are  found  together,  while 
one  quarter  report  more  licentious  than  intemperate 
persons  in  their  communities.  Nearly  all  find  the 
increase  among  the  native  population,  while  several 
call  attention  to  the  recent  increase  among  persons  of 
foreign  birth,  and  especially  their  descendants  in  the 
second  generation.  Several  speak  in  emphatic  con- 
demnation of  the  mischief  done  by  commercial  trav- 


DIVORCE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND.  211 

ellers,  and  others  complain  of  vice  in  shops.  Very  few- 
report  an  improved  public  conscience,  or  stricter  pun- 
ishment of  vice  and  its  crimes ;  while  on  no  point  do 
I  find  so  near  an  approach  to  unanimity  as  in  the 
opinion  that  the  public  conscience  is  dormant,  and  that 
these  offences  are  punished  less  frequently  than  for- 
merly. And  all  the  while  there  is,  if  we  may  depend 
on  the  statements  of  one  who  ought  to  know,  a  vast 
amount  of  obscene  literature  poured  over  the  country. 

This  is  not  an  agreeable  report.  I  know  it  is 
largely  mere  opinion,  to  be  taken  with  allowance. 
But  I  submit  that  it  is  worthy  of  careful  consideration, 
and  should  stimulate  the  most  diligent  private  and 
official  investigation.  "We  are  better,  probably,  in 
respect  to  religion,  in  education,  and  in  some  phases 
of  morals,  than  we  were ;  but  in  chastity  I  fear  we 
are  not. 

See  how  this  question  of  morals  among  us  is  re- 
garded. The  French  Commission  to  the  International 
Exhibition  of  1876  reported,  concerning  us,  "  the  need 
of  a  complete  organization  of  regular  moral  instruc- 
tions," and  called  attention  to  the  fact "  that  the  family 
and  church  have  little  power  over  the  young,  and  that 
the  increased  contagion  of  vice  has  a  bad  influence  on 
public  morality."  It  is  said  that  Dr.  Legge,  after 
showing  some  members  of  the  Chinese  legation  from 
London  over  the  University  of  Oxford,  asked  one  of 
them  —  a  young  man  quite  in  sympathy  wdth  Chris- 
tianity —  his  opinion  as  to  the  merits  of  the  Chinese 
and  English  systems  of  education.  "  I  think,"  said 
the  young  man,  "  that  for  the  purposes  of  science  and 


212       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

general  information  the  schools  in  England  are  in- 
finitely better  than  any  teaching  we  have  in  China. 
But  then,  for  moral  purposes,  making  men  good 
citizens  and  moral  ones,  discharging  all  the  duties  of 
humanity,  my  impression  is  that  our  schools  in  China 
are  better  than  those  in  England  1"  And  yet  the 
French  commission  thought  us  especially  lacking  in 
this  very  matter.  Does  any  one  point,  for  answer, 
to  the  immorality  of  China?  I  reply,  Let  him 
wait  until  our  institutions  are  a  quarter  as  old  as 
those  of  China,  and  our  population  half  as  great. 
"America,"  to  quote  Mr.  Cook,  "is  in  the   gristle 

yet." 

Here  let  me  take  the  testimony  of  two  American 
witnesses  as  to  the  effect  of  the  evils  of  divorce  and 
the  related  vices.  The  first  shall  be  in  regard  to  the 
peril  to  our  institutions.  The  venerable  ex-president 
of  Yale  College,  who  has  given  us  our  best  American 
works  on  political  science  and  divorce,  wrote  at  the 
close  of  the  War  of  the  Eebellion  these  words,  —  and 
there  is  no  man  more  careful  in  his  statements  than 
Dr.  Woolsey,  — "  Eome  is  a  most  interesting  study 
for  us  Americans,  because  her  vices,  greed  for  gold, 
prodigality,  a  coarse  material  civilization,  corruption 
sT  in  the  family,  as  manifested  by  connubial  unfaithful- 
ness and  by  divorce,  are  increasing  among  us.  We 
have  got  rid  of  one  of  her  vices,  slavery,  and  that  is 
a  great  ground  of  hope  for  the  future.  But  whether 
we  are  to  decay  and  lose  our  present  political  power 
depends  npon  our  ability  to  keep  family  life  pure  and 
simple."     [Divorce,  p.  49.]     These  are  the  words  of  a 


DIVORCE   IN   NEW   ENGLAND.  213 

profound  student  of  our  political  institutions,  written 
fifteen  years  ago. 

The  other  witness  is  a  student  of  busines's  and  its 
laws,  as  well  qualified,  perhaps,  as  any  man  in  New 
England  to  speak  of  the  things  that  affect  capital  and 
labor.  The  State  of  Massachusetts  puts  Carroll  D. 
Wright  at  the  head  of  the  Bureau  of  Statistics  of 
Labor.  She  asks  his  opinion  upon  certain  points. 
He  gives  it  in  his  official  report  for  1880,  as  follows  '• 
"  The  study  of  the  questions  belonging  to  us  to  con- 
sider, extending  over  a  half-dozen  years,  has  taught 
us  that  the  industrial  and  social  condition  of  the 
laboring  classes,  as  related  to  the  permanent  prosperity 
of  the  productive  industry  of  the  Commonwealth,  is 
more  affected  by  the  presence  of  crime,  poverty,  and 
the  disorganizing  influences  resulting  from  the  de- 
crease of  marriages,  increase  of  divorces,  and  kindred 
matters,  than  from  many  if  not  all  the  bad  economical 
conditions  resulting  from  want  of  comprehension  of 
the  true  relations  of  labor  and  capital."  [Eeport  of 
Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Statistics  of  Labor  for  1880, 
p.  125.] 

I  have  not  said,  you  will  observe,  that  divorce 
and  licentiousness  are  as  cause  and  effect  to  each 
other,  though  this  is  partly  true.  But  I  think  that  I 
have  shown  that  the  two  evils  are  increasinsr  together, 
and  often  you  will  find  the  increase  in  close  rela- 
tions. Let  me  call  attention,  for  a  moment,  to  cer- 
tain facts  as  to  the  second  object  of  marriage,  —  the 
giving  of  offspring  to  the  world.  I  cite  the  well- 
known  fact  of  the  decrease  in  size  of  the  New  Eng- 


214        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

land  family.  The  family  of  Massachusetts  —  includ- 
ing both  native  and  foreign  —  fell  from  an  average  of 
4.69  in  1865,  to  4.60  in  1875.  The  marriage  rate  — 
that  is,  ratio  of  persons  married  annually  to  the  popula- 
tion —  has  fallen  in  twenty  years  from  a  higher  figure 
than  reported  in  any  European  country  to  the  level 
of  Austria,  and  lower  than  in  any  country  except 
Sweden.  The  number  of  children  under  five  years 
of  age  in  Vermont  was  154  in  every  1,000  inhabi- 
tants in  1830,  and  113  in  1870,  having  fallen  to  100 
in  1860,  and  rising  chiefly  because  of  the  foreign  ele- 
ment.    The  birth-rate  in  New  England  is  probably 

—f^  as  low  as  in  any  European  country ;  among  the 
native  stock,  far  lower.  And  there  are  certain  losses 
of  the  maternal  functions,  well  known  to  physicians, 
which  are  considered  by  them  as  exceedingly  sig- 
nificant. It  is  not  beyond  the  probabilities  to  say 
that  if  these  things  go  on  even  at  less  than  their 
present  rate,  the  native  New-Engiander  wiU  practi- 

"Sl  cally  disappear  in  less  time  than  has  elapsed  since 
the  landing  at  Plymouth.  I  am  told  the  state  of 
things  is  not  much  better  among  those  who  have  set- 
tled in  the  West.  Here  is  one  of  the  stubborn  facts 
of  the  times.  Henceforth  if  the  student  of  American 
institutions  continues  to  visit  Plymouth  Eock,  he 
must  also  take  a  good  look  at  Castle  Garden,  and 
study  the  black  population  of  the  South. 

Look  at  one  more  class  of  facts.  In  the  Western 
Eeserve — comprising  the  twelve  northeastern  coun- 
ties of  Ohio,  settled  mainly  by  emigrants  who  went 
from  Connecticut  long   before  that  State  made  its 


DIVOKCE   IN   NEW   ENGLAND.  215 

new  departure  in  divorce,  and  containing,  it  is  said, 
a  purer  New  England  stock  than  can  be  found  in 
the  entire  country,  unless  it  be  in  parts  of  Maine 
—  the  ratio  of  divorces  to  marriages  was  1  to  11.8 
for  the  two  years  1878  and  1879,  while  in  the  rest 
of  the  State  it  is  1  to  19.9.  Nor  is  the  worst  of 
the  Reserve  in  the  cities.  The  ratio  in  Ashtabula 
County,  among  a  farming  people  originally  from  New 
England,  is  1  to  8.5.  And  in  Lake  County  the  pro- 
portion of  divorce  suits  begun  to  marriages  is  1  to 
6.2,  and  of  divorces  granted,  1  to  7.4.  Unless  there 
be  Like  counties  in  Maine,  this  is  the  worst  county 
for  divorces  in  the  United  States,  except,  for  a  few 
years,  Tolland  County,  Conn.  But  if  you  go  down 
to  Gallia  County,  peopled  with  Welshmen  and 
Southerners,  the  ratio  is  1  to  50,  and  in  Coshocton 
1  to  47.2.  The  divorce  rate  in  those  counties  of  the 
Eeserve  is  several  times  what  it  is  in  these  and 
other  counties.  I  am  told,  too,  that  the  birth  rate 
in  Ohio  is  lowest  where  the  divorce  rate  is  highest. 
It  is  said  that  the  people  of  these  counties  are  the 
most  intelligent  and  virtuous  of  any  in  the  country, 
and  that  the  law-abiding  citizens  of  the  Eeserve  go 
to  the  courts  for  divorce,  while  those  in  other  counties 
do  not.  This  latter  may  be  partly  true  of  people 
reared  in  the  South ;  but  I  suspect  not  of  the  Welsh, 
nor  of  others,  to  anything  like  the  extent  necessary  to 
account  for  the  excess  in  divorces. 

Is  divorce,  then,  a  virtue,  in  spite  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament ?  An  answer  to  this  question  is,  that  nearly 
all  divorces  occur  amoni^  those  outside  our  Christian 


? 


\ 


216       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

congregations,    and   generally    among   people    noted 
^  neither  for  intelligence  nor  virtue.      It   is   neither  a 
^  virtue,  nor  yet  the  proper  safety-valve  of  our  social 
N  life  ;  for  the  evils  it  ought,  in  the  opinion  of  many,  to 
S^.  ;-  check  are  increasing.     I  suggest  rather  that  divorce 
^ ""    "^^  is  one  form  of  social  disease  appearing  in  a  highly 
J'  bred   people  like  those  of  the   New   England  type, 
>^.just  as  other  forms  of  life,  when  carried  to  a  high 
degree  of  perfection,  become  liable  to  their  own  pecu- 
liar and  insidious  tendencies,  which,  unless  carefully 
watched   and   checked,  are     constantly    working   to 
throw  down  the  results  of  high  culture  to  the  lowest 
forms  of  degradation.     It  is  generally  true,  I  think, 
that  divorce  and  kindred  vices  mostly  appear  among 
those  who,  while  reared  under  the  principles  of  our 
best  New  England  life,  fail  to  accept  all  those  prin- 
ciples in  their  integrity,  and  are  thus  thrown  by  the 
influence  of  those  they  do  accept  into  base  perver- 
sions of  the  true   New   England  ideas.     It  is   not 
unlikely   that   Spiritualism,  Free-love,  Divorce,  and 
the  sheer  materialism  of  large  numbers  all  have  some 
such  origin,     Mormonism  and  the  late  Oneida  sys- 
tem of  social  life  are  in  no  small  degree  other  forms  of 
the  evils  under  consideration.     They  are  both  largely 
Yankee  notions  in  their  origin  and  leaders.     Joseph 
Smith,  Brigham  Young,  and  J.  E.  Noyes  were  aU  from 
Vermont. 

It  is  significant  that  within  the  last  twenty  years 
it  is  approximately  true  that  divorces  and  separations 
have  doubled  in  New  England,  in  England  and 
Wales,  in  France,  and   in  Belgium.     Switzerland  is 


DIVORCE  IN   NEW  ENGLAND.  217 

said  to  have  enacted  a  new  divorce  law  in  1874,  by 
which  divorces  are  greatly  facilitated.  The  ratio  to 
marriages  in  some  cantons  is  as  high  as  1  to  14 ;  and 
the  bill  of  M.  Naquet,  in  France,  was  rejected  in  the 
Assembly  only  by  a  vote  of  247  to  216. 

This  leads  to  the  notice  of  some  facts  and  opinions 
of  still  wider  significance.  For  a  long  time  society  in 
Christian  countries  has  been  making  more  of  the  in- 
dividual, and  less  of  the  family,  as  its  organic  unit. 
Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine  sums  up  the  conclusions  of 
an  exceedingly  interesting  part  of  his  "  Ancient  Law  " 
by  saying,  "  The  movement  of  the  progressive  socie- 
ties .  .  .  has  been  distinguished  by  the  gradual  dis-  ) 
solution  of  family  dependency,  and  the  growth  of  / 
individual  obligation  in  its  place.  The  individual 
is  steadily  substituted  for  the  family,  as  the  unit 
of  which  civil  laws  take  account."  [Ancient  Law, 
p.  163.]  Though  he  uses  the  term  "  family  "  in  a  wide 
sense,  it  is  inclusive  of  the  stricter  use  of  the  term. 
"  Contract,"  he  says,  "  is  the  tie  between  man  and 
man  which  replaces  those  forms  of  reciprocity  and 
rights  which  have  their  origin  in  the  family."  And 
he  concludes  the  chapter  by  saying  that  "  the  move- 
ment of  the  progressive  societies  hitherto  has  been  a 
movement  from  stattis  to  contract"  Nothing,  it  seems 
to  me,  could  be  truer  of  our  American  practice  in 
marriage  than  its  tendency  to  reverse  the  true  order, 
and  sink  the  status,  to  which  the  contract  of  marriage 
leads,  in  the  contract  itself.  And  the  tendency 
reaches  far  beyond  the  marriage  bond. 

That  remark,  too,  of  Herbert  Spencer  has  signifi- 


j" 


^ 


218       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

cauce,  which  declares  that  Individuation  and  Genesis 
are  antagonistic  to  each  other.  Carpenter,  I  think, 
and  others  note  the  same  law  in  physiology.  Mr. 
Spencer  says :  ''  The  development  of  society,  as 
well  as  the  development  of  man  and  the  develop- 
ment of  life  generally,  may  be  described  as  a  ten- 
dency to  individuate,  —  to  become  a  tJmig."  This 
is  illustrated  in  a  remarkable  degree  in  the  drift  of 
New  England  social  life.  The  decrease  of  marriages 
and  births,  the  changes  in  the  physical  constitution 
of  women,  the  disposition  to  seek  not  only  the  sup- 
port of  life,  but  its  pleasures  and  great  ends,  outside 
the  family  relation,  are  patent  facts.  And  when  we 
think  of  the  effects  of  that  fundamental  principle  of 
Protestantism,  —  the  right  of  the  individual  con- 
science —  and  of  its  formative  power  over  our  re- 
ligious and  political  institutions ;  wdien  we  recall  the 
influence  of  Eousseau  and  his  social  contract  upon  the 
minds  of  some  of  the  political  leaders  of  our  country  ; 
when  we  consider  the  emphasis  we  have  naturally 
given  to  the  rights  of  the  individual  in  the  achievement 
of  national  independence,  in  giving  freedom  to  the 
slaA^e,  and  in  doing  a  greatly  needed  work  —  in  many 
respects  at  least  —  for  the  emancipation  of  woman,  it 
need  not  surprise  us  to  find  the  idea  of  the  family,  as 
the  fundamental  unit  and  great  organizing  element  of 
society,  somewhat  obscured.  This  has  been  wellnigh 
inevitable  while  we  were  busy  in  behalf  of  human 
rights,  and  it  has  been  greatly  aided  by  the  drift  of 
nearly  all  civilized  society.  And  to  these  forces  must 
be   added  the  effect  of  modern  wealth,  especially  as 


DIVORCE  IN   NEW   ENGLAND.  219 

developed  under  the  influence  of  machinery  and  the 
laws  of  trade.  There  is  an  effect  of  these  laws, 
which,  if  not  the  dominant  one,  is  at  least  very- 
powerful,  and  which  is  disintegrating  to  the  family. 
Commerce  is  chiefly  concerned  with  the  mass  and  the 
individual.  A  tendency  exists  here  to  treat  human 
life  as  increasingly  individual, —  each  man  struggling 
for  himself,  each  woman  for  herself,  against  the  mass, 
often  with  neglect  or  downright  murder  for  the  poor 
innocents.  The  modern  factory  and  salesroom  are 
in  some  considerable  degree  a  grave  peril  to  the  mar- 
riage relation  and  the  family. 

It  does  not  wholly  surprise  me  to  hear  thoughtful 
and  patriotic  Catholics  say,  "Your  whole  theory  of  so- 
ciety is  wrong.  It  is  based  on  individualism.  Your 
doctrine  of  human  equality  is  the  outcome  of  that 
false  Protestant  notion  which  asserts  the  right  of  the 
individual  conscience  to  interpret  the  Bible  for  itself. 
Not  only  the  old  French  Republic  was  utterly  wrong, 
but  the  new  is  equally  so.  Even  the  American 
Republic  is  radically  wrong.  The  logic  and  practice  ><^ 
of  Protestantism  end  religiously  in  atheism  and  socially 
in  communism.  See  its  inevitable  fruits  in  your  di- 
vorces, your  lack  of  reverence  for  parents  and  civil 
authority,  and  in  your  godless  Protestants,  who  care 
nothing  for  the  church,  God,  or  even  morals."  Here 
that  church  joins  issue  with  us,  and  indeed  with  all 
modern  society.  Is  the  point  well  taken?  and  musty^ 
the  alternative  become  Rome  or  Rousseau  ?  A  large/  ^^ 
number  of  our  people  say  yes,  and  eagerly  accept 
individualism  in  nearly  all  its  destructive  forms ;  and 


220       CHKIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

this  generally  uncliurched,  often  atheistic,  and  fre- 
quently grossly  immoral  class  constitutes  one  of  the 
most  dangerous  perils  to  our  institutions. 

If  I  have  made  myself  understood,  you  learn  from 
this  rough  outline  that  the  family  is  suffering  in  four 
ways  in  New  England.  More  than  two  thousand  di- 
/^  vorces  annually,  reaching  twice  that  number  of  per- 
sons directly,  and  indirectly  many  times  more,  are 
destroying  its  vital  bond  with,  as  yet,  but  the  begin- 
ning of  an  earnest  attempt  at  reform.  That  is  the  blow 
aimed  at  the  life  itself.  Secondly,  licentiousness,  as 
shown  by  the  best  accessible  statistics  of  crime,  is  in 
most  localities  increasing,  and  rarely  has  been  grap- 
pled with  at  all  as  earnest  men  and  women  are  taking 
hold  of  intemperance.  As  divorce  destroys  the  moral 
bond,  so  licentiousness  corrupts  the  physical  basis  of 
the  family,  while  it  poisons  its  moral  life.  The  physi- 
cal basis  of  marriage  is  sex,  which  next  to  life  is  the 
'z  profoundest  fact  in  nature  and  society.  Thirdly, 
marriage  is  giving  fewer  children  to  the  world ;  and, 
fourthly,  the  growth  of  individualism,  under  the  influ- 
ence of  civil  and  economical  laws  and  social  and 
religious  forces,  tends  to  lessen  the  influence  of  mar- 
riage, the  family,  and  the  home  over  the  individual, 
and  especially  in  society.  Thus  the  bond  and  the 
threefold  end  of  marriage  suffer  together,  though,  it 
may  be,  in  varying  degree. 

A  part  of  this  evil  is  due*  to  temporary  causes,  — 
slightly  to  the  war,  but  more,  I  must  think,  to  finan- 
cial influences,  —  and  greatly  encouraged,  in  the  case 
of  divorce,  by  most  careless  and  reprehensible  legisla- 


DIVORCE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND.  221 

tion  and  court  practice.  Climate,  food,  and  kindred 
influences  are  at  work  also.  But  to  me  the  prime 
causes  lie  deeper,  and  run  back  into  the  most  serious 
problems  of  modern  society.  For  this  reason  I  have 
preferred  to  outline  the  subject  in  its  broader  relations 
rather  than  go  into  the  details  of  mere  divorce.  I  do 
not  think  the  facts  as  to  divorce  can  be  properly  seen 
without  much  study  in  all  these  directions. 

Now  comes  the  question,  What  are  we  doing  to 
meet  this  evil  and  its  related  vices  ?  The  Christian 
public  is  beginning  to  move  in  earnest  for  reform  in 
divorce  legislation,  and  ought  to  succeed.  But  there 
is  other  work  to  be  done.  Law  is  the  expression 
of  public  opinion.  That  needs  vigorous  cultivation- 
When  a  religious  newspaper  devotes  two  solid  columns 
—  as  one  in  this  city  did  week  before  last  —  to  the 
teaching  of  the  simplest  elements  concerning  marriage 
and  divorce  to  an  intelligent  man,  who,  to  all  appear- 
ance, holds  the  notions  of  a  heathen  of  the  days  of 
the  effete  Eoman  Empire,  with  the  feeling  that  it  has 
enough  readers  of  that  class  to  justify  this  use  of  its 
crowded  columns,  it  is  time  the  schoolmaster  and 
tract-distributer  were  abroad. 

But  where  shall  we  get  the  tracts  ?  The  obscene 
press  is  busy.  What  is  the  Christian  press  doing? 
Diligent  inquiry  of  leading  Protestant  publication 
and  tract  societies  having  offices  in  this  city  discover 
two  tracts  on  divorce,  and  less  than  a  dozen  —  mostly 
cheap  apologies  for  what  we  ought  to  have — on  one 
to  two  only  of  the  licentious  vices  and  crimes.  More 
than  one  or  two  societies  tell  me,  "  We  have  nothing 


222       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

of  the  kind."  But  a  single  temperance  society  has 
over  seven  hundred  publications !  Here  is  one  way 
in  v^^hich  the  Catholics  take  a  wise  care  of  their  people 
that  we  do  not  of  ours.  You  find  no  lack  of  good  in- 
struction in  their  publications  on  these  subjects.  It  is 
also  notewortliy  that  Massachusetts,  in  a  term  of  years, 
changed  her  divorce  system  and  was  far  down  towards 
the  level  of  Connecticut  in  actual  practice,  without  — 
so  far  as  I  can  learn  —  a  single  persistent  protest 
from  her  Christian  press  or  from  the  platform,  and 
with  probably  only  now  and  then  a  cry  of  alarm  from 
the  pulpit.  And  we  have  been  holding  up  our  hands 
in  horror  at  Connecticut  and  Indiana,  while  Maine 
has  gone  beyond  Connecticut  in  the  business  of  set- 
tling family  quarrels  in  her  courts. 

I  know  all  that  some  will  say  about  the  difficulty 
of  treating  delicate  subjects.  President  Dwight  com- 
plained in  his  times  that "  the  general  prejudice  against 
any  public  exposure  of  the  evils  attendant  upon  the  vio- 
lation of  the  seventh  commandment  has  been  carried  to 
a  length  unwarranted  either  by  the  Scriptures  or  com- 
mon sense."  He  refused  to  be  bound  by  the  false  stand- 
ard of  the  times,  and  a  moral  revolution  was  wrought 
in  New  Haven.  Jonathan  Edwards  was  thrust  out  of 
->  his  pulpit,  it  is  said,  more  for  his  plain  dealing  with 
^  the  vices  of  the  young  than  for  any  other  reason ;  but 
the  cause  of  religion  and  morality  gained  by  his  fidel- 
ity. If  these  things  are  as  some  allege,  we  had  better 
expunge  the  seventh  commandment,  prepare  an  ex- 
^  purgated  edition  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and 
cut  out  whole  chapters  of  the  Epistles  to  the  Corin- 


DIVORCE  IN   NEW  ENGLAND.  223 

thians ;  in  fact,  revise  the  Bible  and  the  Prayer-Book 
in  the  interests  of  prudery.  But  most  of  you  will 
agree  that  no  truth  in  religion  or  morals  will  have 
very  much  influence  over  private  life  long  after  it  has  X 
ceased  to  be  a  frequent  theme  of  the  pulpit.  There 
must  be  some  way,  therefore,  in  which  vice  can  be 
wisely  denounced,  and  chastity  properly  taught  and 
encouraged,  by  public  and  private  instruction.  In- 
temperance and  lust  are  the  twin  vices  of  society, 
together  begetting  most  of  its  crime  and  misery.  No 
attack  upon  the  one  is  well  made  unless  it  is  sup- 
ported in  some  way  by  an  assault  upon  the  other. 

We  need  a  literature  on  this  subject,  scientifically 
sound  and  scripturally  authoritative.  A  thoroiiyh  ex- 
amination of  the  nature,  the  rights,  and  the  place  of  tJie 
family  in  civil  society  is  the  duty  of  the  hour.  In  this 
work  will  be  found  the  key  to  the  whole  problem. 
The  study  of  the  institutions  of  society,  the  teachings 
of  biology,  especially  of  human  physiology,  will  show 
that  our  Lord  did  not  lay  more  sure  the  foundations  of 
personal  liberty  and  individual  perfection  of  character 
than  he  did  the  foundations  of  a  stable  human  society 
in  his  doctrine  of  marriage  and  divorce ;  and  we  shall 
see  tliat  the  safety  of  American  society  especially  lies 
in  our  ability  to  use  this  organic  unit  of  the  family  in 
all  its  completeness,  and  charged  with  all  its  created 
force. 

And  now  we  may  reply  to  the  criticism  of  Catho- 
lics.    We  do  not  see  the  use  of  fleeing  to  Eome  to 
escape  tlie  evils  of  America.     Italy  and  the  Catholic  ^ 
countries  of  Europe  are  too  full  of  illegitimate  children  "^^ 


X 


224        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

for  that ;  and  we  hesitate  still  more  when  we  learn 
that  Catholic  Belgium  has  doubled  her  separations 
and  quadrupled  her  divorces  in  the  last  forty  years. 
All  honor  to  the  noble  stand  the  Catholics  of  America 
have  taken  in  the  defence  of  marriage  and  for  the  pro- 
tection of  unborn  life  !  But  our  hope,  and  their  hope 
too,  is  in  that  grand  old  Protestant  way  of  digging 
deeper  into  the  Scriptures,  especially  those  words  of 
our  Lord  ending  with  that  warning,  *'  What,  therefore, 
God  hath  joined  together,  let  not  man  put  asunder." 
Here  Catholics  and  Protestants  may  join  hands.  When 
the  family  is  recognized  in  its  nature,  as  having  both  a 
moral  and  physical  constitution,  as  possessing,  next 
to  individual  existence,  a  life  and  unity  of  greater 
strength  and  importance  than  any  other  natuml  organ- 
ism in  the  world,  and  is  so  respected  and  used,  we 
shall  not  only  find  safety,  but  give  new  life  and  prom- 
ise to  American  institutions.  American  institutions 
and  Protestantism  are  no  failure.  There  is  more 
light  in  the  Word  of  God  for  society. 

We  need  to  do  vigorous  work  now  because  of  the 
timeliness  of  this  agitation.  Growing  Mormonism, 
for  one  thing,  challenges  modern  civilization  and  is 
preparing  to  stand  battle.  We  cannot  evade  the  con- 
flict. Especially  that  great  antislavery  sentiment  of 
the  North,  which  indicted  slavery  and  polygamy  as 
"  the  twin  relics  of  barbarism,"  must  stand  firm  here. 
"  By  giving  up  slavery,"  wrote  F.  D.  Maurice  of  us,  "  by 
overthrowing  the  horrors  which  it  introduced  into 
the  marriage  relation,  —  horrors  with  which  nothing 
in  the  worst  records  of  polygamy  can  be  compared,  -^ 


DIVORCE  IN   NEW  ENGLAND.  225 

they  have  borne  the  true  witness  against  Mormon- 
ism."  [Social  Morality,  p.  63.]  The  President  has  put 
the  issue  on  the  right  ground.  As  Dr.  Wharton  says, 
"  Marriage  is  not  merely  a  contract,  but  an  interna- 
tional institution  of  Christendom.  .  .  .  Nor  do  the 
features  of  marriage  derive  their  force  from  the  legis- 
lation of  any  particular  State.  They  existed  prior 
to  any  territorial  legislation."  [Conflict  of  Laws, 
p.  122.] 

But  the  Mormons  will  turn  upon  us  when  pushed 
with  this  doctrine.  Already  they  declare  that  their 
peculiar  institution  checks  vice,  and  they  are  not  slow 
in  making  comparisons  with  us.  We  feel  some  of 
these  things.  Professor  Phelps  wrote,  a  year  ago  (I 
quote  by  permission) :  "  We  are  not  half  awake  to  the 
fact  that  by  our  laws  of  divorce  and  our  toleration  of 
the  '  social  evil,'  we  are  doing  more  to  corrupt  the 
nation's  heart  than  Mormonism,  tenfold.  Vice,  avowed 
and  blatant  and  organized,  to  a  large  extent  nullifies 
itself,  so  far  as  self-diffusion  is  concerned.  But  vice, 
lurking  and  still,  trickles  into  all  the  crevices  of 
society.  A  nation  of  Mormons  is  impossible,  —  not 
so  a  nation  of  libertines."  That  is  the  voice  of 
Andover. 

Look  to  the  South.  To  one  race  of  five  millions 
the  home  has  been  but  a  chance,  and  marriage  a 
mockery;  while  the  other  has  been  corrupted  with 
the  licentiousness  of  the  two  races.  The  tissue  ballot 
is  an  evanescent  evil ;  the  fast  multiplying  black  voter, 
a  growing  peril  of  vast  proportions.  Much  as  the 
South  needs  education,  she  needs  the  home  more.    The 

15 


226       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

education  that  gives  her  the  schoolhouse,  or  some 
other,  must  transform  the  negro  hovel  into  a  home. 
The  philanthropy  of  the  North  will  not  complete  its 
w^ork  until  it  has  united,  if  possible,  v^ith  the  justice 
of  the  South  in  giving  the  negro  a  Christian  home. 
The  two  great  institutions  of  property  and  marriage 
have  risen  together,  and  exist  in  mutual  dependence. 
Therefore  the  business  interests  of  the  South,  as  well 
as  its  social  regeneration  and  political  welfare,  call  for 
the  soundest  theory  and  the  most  correct  practice  of 
the  family.  The  defence  of  Indian  rights,  too,  has  at 
last  been  made  to  turn  on  individual  property  in  a 
home,  thus  melting  away  the  ice  of  barbarism  in  the 
rights  of  Christian  civilization. 

Or,  finally,  if  we  regard  our  future  as  a  whole,  and 
think  of  hundreds  instead  of  tens  of  millions  of  people, 
with  wealth  and  resources  beyond  the  dream  of  the 
wildest  fancy  of  the  Old  World  organized  into  gigantic 
corporations,  and  all  these  interests  intrusted  to  uni- 
versal suffrage,  making  wealth  in  some  form  the  great 
coming  question,  or  if  we  think  of  earlier  perils  when, 
at  the  next  commercial  crisis,  European  communist 
and  native  demagogue  join  hands,  we  need  be  sure 
that  the  bulwark  of  the  family  be  set  firm  as  the  moun- 
tains to  meet  the  shock,  and  that  we  may  not,  like  the 
England  of  to-day,  be  toiling  in  the  seas  because  her 
system  of  tenure  of  property  in  land  forbids  a  true 
home  to  the  masses. 

The  line  of  an  old  Eoman  poet  runs  like  this :  "  He 
taught  them  divine  laws,  instituted  marriages,  and 
built  spacious   cities."     "Nothing,"  said   the   writer 


DIVORCE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND.  227 

quoted  in  opening,  "  can  be  more  philosophical  than 
the  succession  of  ideas  here  presented  by  Calvus." 
America  is  fast  building  cities.  Let  her  not  forget 
the  divine  laws  and  the  institution  of  marriage.  For, 
by  as  much  as  she  is  to  be  more  than  the  older  nations, 
by  so  much  must  her  corner-stone  of  the  family 
be  broader  and  more  enduring  than  that  of  other 
countries. 

Nothing,  if  I  may  say  it,  leads  so  surely  into  the 
heart  of  these  living  issues  as  does  this  question  of 
Divorce.  It  is  our  opportunity,  that  we  cannot  fairly 
grapple  with  it  without  being  compelled  to  bring  the 
whole  subject  of  the  Family  to  the  front.  This 
extremity  of  the  nation  is  the  opportunity  of  the 
Christian  Church.  Let  the  Church  so  proclaim  the 
doctrine  of  the  Family  that  all  the  people  shall  take 
up  the  words  of  the  President :  "  The  sanctity  of  mar- 
riage and  the  family  relation  are  the  corner-stone  of  X- 
our  American  society  and  civilization,"  and  make 
them  known  to  every  man,  to  every  woman,  and  to 
every  child  in  the  land.  They  deserve  to  be  cut  into 
the  rock  of  the  mountain  passes  of  Utah.  Let  Cali- 
fornia, if  she  must  have  something  to  calm  her  fears, 
write  these  words  in  Chinese  characters  at  her  Golden 
Gate.  But  let  us  continue  to  proclaim  them  as  the 
right  of  the  Indian  and  the  best  hope  of  the  South ; 
let  us  so  set  them  that  commerce  shall  read  them 
and  the  unlettered  immigrant  inquire  their  meaning 
as  he  enters  the  harbor  of  New  York ;  while  we  do 
not  fail  to  cut  them  into  the  granite  canopy  over 
Plymouth  Eock. 


228       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

It  will  bje  time  enough  for  Utah  and  the  South  to 
sneer  at  divorce  and  vice  in  New  England  when  they 
shall  have  begun  reform  within  their  own  borders. 
Massachusetts  or  New  England  will  utter  no  word  of 
censure  for  Utah  or  South  Carolina  which  she  does 
not  intend  shall  be  heard  at  home. 


IX. 

SIGNIFICANCE    OF    THE    HISTORIC 
ELEMENT    IN    SCRIPTURE. 

By  EEV.  J.  B.  THOMAS,  D.D. 


IX. 


SIGNIFICANCE    OF    THE    HISTORIC 
ELEMENT    IN    SCRIPTURE. 

By  rev.  J.  B.  THOMAS,  D.D. 

"ly /TY  theme  is  "The  Significance  of  the  Historic 
-^^■^  Element  in  Scripture."  I  propose  to  follow  in 
its  discussion  that  inductive  method  which  is  usually 
characterized  as  "the  scientific,"  but  which  may  with 
equal  propriety  be  termed  the  natural  method.  For 
every  child  is  an  inductive  reasoner,  when  from  two 
facts  observed,  namely,  fire  seen  and  pain  felt  in  con- 
tact, he  constructs  the  theory  that  fire  burns  ;  a  hypoth- 
esis with  which  he  is  usually  content  without  taking 
the  further  step  necessary  to  satisfy  the  rigidly  scientific 
mind,  of  repeated  verification.  It  is  certainly  one  of  the 
illustrations  of  that  "  total  depravity  "  of  the  human 
intellect,  which  the  men  of  intellect  are  so  apt  to 
deride,  that  it  should  have  persisted  so  obstinately  in 
tracing  its  pyramids  downwards,  hanging  them  from  an 
aerial  apex ;  that  it  should  canonize  the  man  who  in- 
sisted on  taking  the  earth  as  a  foundation.  Perhaps 
nobody  has  of  late  years  better  illustrated  the  prover- 
bial virility  and  clearness  of  the  New  England  mind 


>^ 


232       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

than  Theodore  Parker.  He  was  wont  to  quote  with 
gusto  the  satirical  mot  upon  the  Hegelians, — that  "part 
of  them  were  still  milking  the  barren  heifer,  and  the 
rest  were  holding  the  sieve."  While  at  the  same  time 
Boston  Brahminism  was  holding  up  its  fine  woven 
sieve  to  catch  the  ethereal  drops  wrung  by  him  with 
rationalistic  fingers  from  the  udder  of  Transcenden- 
talism. 

The  present  time  is  more  prosaic  and  more  wise. 
It  demands,  first  of  all,  a  fact ;  then  for  comparison 
and  inference  other  facts ;  then  for  verification  again 
facts.  Here  seems  safe  journeying ;  for  although  our 
intermediate  theory  be  but  a  tremulous  wire  bridge, 
it  stretches  from  rock  to  rock. 

I.   PRELIMINARY  SUGGESTIONS. 

Still,  however,  precaution  is  needful,  for  our  wire- 
spinners  are  capricious,  and  even  the  rocks,  under  the 
gaze  of  our  atomic  philosophers,  have  become  clouds 
of  vapor  dancing  in  the  sunbeam.' 

l.Fad.  —  Since  we  must  begin  with  a  fact,  it  is 
appropriate  to  inquire,  "  What  is  a  fact  ? "  And  here, 
as  we  are  more  in  danger  of  being  cheated  by  soph- 
istry than  imposed  upon  by  common  sense,  it  is 
better  to  point  out  two  or  three  misleading  distinc- 
tions. The  first  I  mention  is  the  laying  a  heavy  strain 
on  the  antithesis  hetween  a  fact  and  a  phenomenon,  and 
insisting  that  the  latter  cannot  be  the  basis  of  a  logi- 
cal induction.  "First  catch  your  hare,"  tauntingly 
says  my  scientific  friend.     But  my  hare  when  caught 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT   IN   SCRIPTURE.  233 

is  only  a  phenomenon.  I  seek  the  ultimate  fact 
beneath  ;  I  flay  him ;  I  dissect  him  ;  I  cinder  him  ;  I 
resolve  him  into  his  chemical  constituents.  The 
elements  reached  are  not  yet  ultimate,  although 
beyond  microscopic  reach ;  and  I  am  told  that  when 
found  each  of  this  countless  group  of  atoms  will  be  a 
complex  sphere  whose  movements  are  as  immeasura- 
ble as  those  of  the  solar  system,  and  involve  a  problem 
which  no  mathematician  even  knows  how  to  attack. 
I  think  you  will  agree  that  the  search  is  hopeless.  Is 
it  not  better  to  accept  the  phenomenal  hare  as  a  suffi- 
cient basis,  either  of  soup  or  logic,  than  to  destroy  it 
in  quest  of  the  reality,  which  is  phenomenal  after  all? 
"  Life  "  may  be  only  a  phenomenon,  but  it  is  quite  as 
real  a  fact  as  "  protoplasm,"  and  is  not  explained  by  be- 
ing ignored  in  behalf  of  "  carbonic  acid  and  water." 

Again,  confusion  is  introduced  by  limiting  the 
term  to  the  phenomena  of  sense  alone,  thus  excluding 
all  testimony  from  other  sources.  The  eye  is  a  fact, 
and  so  the  image  upon  the  retina  and  the  tremulous 
movement  of  the  optic  nerve  ;  and  these  being  verifi- 
able by  sense  are  fit  bases  for  induction.  But  not  so 
the  visual  impression,  the  memory,  the  thought  of  that 
which  was  seen.  The  event  seen  is  a  fact,  but  the 
same  event  recounted  has  ceased  to  be  a  fact,  having 
gone  beyond  the  range  of  external  perception.  If 
this  be  so,  the  bulk  of  scientific  induction  and  the 
whole  of  historic  reasoning  are  baseless.  The  facts  of 
consciousness  and  of  belief  on  testimony  may  be  less 
available  for  logical  purposes,  but  they  are  not  less 
real,  because  belonging  to  a  different  sphere.  It  is  fur- 


^      234       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

^  V  ther  alleged,  that  nothing  is  to  he  accepted  as  fact  that 
is  beyond  eocperience,  that  is,  that  has  not  been  proven. 
But  this  is  to  confound  facts  with  theories.  Facts 
are  observed ;  theories  are  proved.  Pregnant  terms 
are  sometimes  used,  which  increase  the  confusion ;  as 
when  it  is  said  that  no  man  ever  saw  a  miracle,  —  for 
the  term  "  miracle  "  involves  not  only  a  fact,  to  which 
r^  the  senses  may  testify,  but  the  hypothesis  of  its  super- 

V"^         natural  origin.     The  fact  may  be   accepted   on   the 
"^  testimony  of  the  plainest  man ;  its  occult  cause  may 

^  bewilder   the    philosopher.       Moreover,  it   is   worth 

observing  that  the  sceptical  attitude  involved  in  this 
,  definition  paralyzes  inquiry  with  the  first  step ;  for 
our  first  fact  must  be  verified  by  comparison  with 
other  facts,  and  by  the  trustworthiness  of  our  own 
experience,  while  as  yet  we  have  no  experience.  It 
assumes,  against  all  observation,  that  we  are  born 
Pyrrhonists.  On  the  contrary,  life  itself  is  possible 
only  upon  faith  in  the  fidelity  of  instinct  and  the 
observing  faculties,  and  in  the  predominant  truthful- 
ness of  men.  It  will  be  sufficient,  then,  to  recognize  as 
prima  facie  fit  basis  of  reasoning  whatever  is  given 
on  the  testimony  of  consciousness,  of  sense,  or  of 
unimpeached  witnesses. 

2.  Theory.  —  A  preliminary  word  is  also  needful  as 
to  the  meaning  and  function  of  theory.  And  first,  it 
is  well  to  remember  that  theory  must  rest  on  observa- 
tion, and  cannot,  therefore,  lawfully  precede  it.  To 
proceed  to  the  study  of  the  Bible  on  the  assumption 
of  its  certain  inspiration,  or  under  a  protest  against 
its  possible  inspiration,  is  in  either  case  to  renounce 


-y- 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT  IN   SCRIPTURE.  235 

the   inductive   method   and   return  to  the  "high  a 
priori  road."      For  inspiration  is  a  question  not  of    X^ 
fact,  but  of  theory.      It  cannot  be  observed,  but  must 
be  inferred.      There  is  this  special  danger  also  in  the 
preliminary  application  of  a   theoretic  term :    that, 
while  it  is  in  fact  to  the  last  degree  nebulous  and  plas- 
tic, the  inquirer,  starting  out  with  a  straight-edged 
conception  of  its  meaning,  is  tempted  either  to  blink 
incongruous  facts,  or  to  torture  them  into  conform- 
ity to  his  straight  line ;  or,  failing  this,  to  renounce        '^ 
the  term  altogether.      To  one  man  inspiration  may 
mean   faultless   precision   of  syllable   and   date;    to 
another,  direct  and  oracular  dictation  of  historic  as    j 
well  as  didactic    truth  ;    to  another,  supervisory  re-    ! 
straint  against  harmful  error  in  doctrine  ;  to  another,  3 
only    spiritual    exaltation    and    suggestion,   without     ""^^ 
release  from  human  infirmity ;  and  so  on  through  all 
the  hypothetic  spectrum.      False  theories  and  imper- 
fect theories  there  are  certain  to  be,  even  upon  the 
facts ;  but  vain  theories,  scornfully  ignoring  the  ex- 
istence or  repudiating  the  need  of  facts,  there  do  not 
need  to  be. 

Again,  erroneous  impressions  are  apt  to  arise,  as  to 
the  nature  and  value  of  inductive  theory, /?'0??i  the  use 
of  sweeping  phrases ;  such  as  that  which  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer  uses,  when  he  proposes,  to  establish  his  theory 
upon  an  "  exhaustive  induction  "  from  all  the  facts  of  , 
nature  and  humanity.  '^ 

This  would,  indeed,  be  a  task  for  Omniscience,  and 
the  residual  conclusion  veiy  nearly  a  mathematical 
certainty.     A  similar  implication  is  involved  in  the 


236       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

alleged  methods  of  the  positive  philosophy.  The 
original  theoretic  horizon,  it  is  said,  was  the  theologi- 
cal,—  boundless,  but,  on  exploration,  empty ;  the  lines 
were  set  closer  in  the  metaphysical,  but  this  proved 
also  on  trial  a  fruitless  realm  ;  and  we  are  accordingly 
i)^  reduced  within  the  tight  rim  of  the  positive,  by  the 
rigid  and  conclusive  processes  of  experimental  elimi- 
nation. Let  us  seek  an  analogy  in  cosmology.  Once 
this  earth  was  man's  universe  ;  its  measure  boundless, 
the  low-bending  heavens  ministering  to  it  with  torch- 
lights, that  men  called  stars.  We  have  reduced  the 
illimitable  boundaries  of  the  earth,  for  we  have  gone 
round  it.  We  have  exploded  the  ancient  supersti- 
tions as  to  the  Hyperboreans,  for  we  have  visited 
them.  We  have  weighed  our  earth  and  proved  it, 
and  found  it  solid,  and  our  knowledge  concerning  it 
seems  nearly  as  positive  and  spherically  complete  as 
the  earth  itself  But  have  we  got  the  universe  into 
our  crucible  and  reached  an  ultimate  analysis  of  it  ? 
Unfortunately  for  that  hypothesis,  Copernicus  has 
meantime  found  his  Archimedean  fulcrum,  and  tilted 
our  earth  and  our  spherical  philosophy  with  it  into 
the  illimitable.  "The  heavens  have  gone  off,"  since 
^"     our  childhood,  "and  become  astronomical." 

And  the  continents  of  the  skies  have  not  ceased  to 
be,  or  to  challenge  the  reverent  or  unsatisfied  soul, 
though  islanded  for  a  time  in  this  corner  of  space,  to 
a  broader  vision  and  a  nobler  hope. 

The  theoretic  process  is  positive,  not  negative.  Its 
results  are  obtained  by  collating  our  knowledge,  not 
by  sifting  our  ignorance ;  we  proceed  from  the  centre 


THE   HISTORIC   ELExMENT  IN   SCRIPTURE.  237 

toward  the  circumference ;  and  our  results,  so  far  as  the 
universe  is  concerned,  can  be  probable  only,  and  not 
certain,  as  they  might  be  if  we  proceeded  from  an 
explored  circumference,  with  convergent  lines,  to  a 
single  centre. 

It  is  manifest,  therefore,  that  without  omniscience 
and  eternity  we  can  never  logically  exclude  the  su- 
pernatural. The  well  of  causes  is  too  deep  for  our 
plumb,  the  rim  of  space  too  distant  for  our  lines. 
The  electric  message  seems  supernatural  to  the  savage, 
and  a  crimson  star  would  have  startled  the  ancient 
astronomers. 

Again,  an  inductive  theory,  being  only  a  suggested 
explanation  of  the  coincidence  of  certain  facts,  is  not 
necessarily  overthroivn  by  casual  contradictions;  at 
least  in  the  absence  of  another  theory  more  exact. 
The  business  of  the  theorist  is  not  primarily  to  ex- 
plain exceptions,  but  to  discover  a  law.  And  this 
suggestion  is  important;  since  the  critical  instinct 
seems  to  find  so  much  ranker  growth/in  the  mire  of 
intellectual  self-conceitJ]^than  the  love  of  affirmative 
truth.  Too  many  meif  postpone  the  study  of  Scrip- 
ture as  a  whole,  until  their  sagaciously  apprehensive 
nerves  are  quieted  by  being  told  "  where  Cain  got  his 
wife."  Criticism  has  its  place,  to  be  sure;  but  it 
should  be  a  finger-post  at  the  crossing,  not  a  toll-bar 
at  the  entrance  of  the  road,  —  a  pruning-knife,  not  an 
axe  at  the  root  of  the  tree.  Phlebotomy  has  its  uses 
in  the  hands  of  a  skilful  practitioner;  but  in  the 
hands  of  an  undeveloped  and  headlong  critic,  it  re- 
sembles rather  the  singing  of  the  mosquito,  whose 


X 


238       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

sting  irritates  without  profit,  and  who  becomes  con- 
spicuous only  by  the  blood  he  borrows  from  creatures 
nobler  than  himself.  Criticism,  therefore,  may  not 
profitably  supersede  or  antecede  theorizing.  Let  the 
critic  first  tell  me  his  theory,  then  we  can  match 
swords. 

3.  Verification.  —  Faith  in  miracles  and  prayer  is 
challenged  in  our  day  to  accredit  itself  by  experimental 
test,  or  be  relegated  to  that  limbo  of  superstition  which 
has  been  escaped  by  "  all  sensible  men."  Professor 
(JIuxley  makes  the  test  of  reality  to  consist  of  a  ca- 
pacity of  "  being  verified  by  experiment  any  time  we 
like  to  try.*^  Mr,  Darwin  thinks  it  worth  stating,  as 
an  argumbiit,  that  "  no  man  ever  saw  a  special  crea- 

/      tion."      And  Mr.  Spencer  gives  the  coup  de  grace  to 

the  idea  of  creation  itself  by  suggesting  that  it  is 

,    "  inconceivable."     Now,  in  connection  with  all  this,  it 

/  is  well  to  remember  that  we  are  reduced  by  physical 
philosophers  to  the  necessity  of  faith  in  two  funda- 
mental theories ;  neither  of  which  is  verifiable  by 
experiment,  and  each  of  which  rests  on  an  idea  which 
is  inconceivable.  For  the  Newtonian  theory  of  gravi- 
tation demands  the  action  of  a  body  where  it  is  not, 
through  a  non-existent  medium ;  and  the  commonly 
accepted  theory  of  light  rests  on  the  assumption  of  a 
"  luminiferous  ether,"  which,  according  to  the  descrip- 
tion of  Dr.  Young  himself,  while  permitting  us  to 
live  in '  and  move  through  it  without  appreciable 
resistance,  is  yet  "  absolutely  solid."  Professor  Je- 
vons,  in  characterizing  it,  seems  unconsciously  to 
resort  to   a   much-ridiculed  phrase   in   our  English 


THE   HISTORIC   ELExMEXT   IN   SCRIPTURE.  239 

Bible,  describing  the  space  above  us  as  "  an  adaman- 
tine firmament."  It  is  clear,  then,  that  hypotheses 
may  still  be  admissible,  which  are  directly  verifiable 
neither  by  experiment,  by  reason,  nor  by  testimony ; 
if,  taken  as  data,  they  give  coherence  and  consist- 
ency to  other  hypotheses,  which  are  so  verifiable.  If 
the  assumption  of  a  cause  beyond  the  range  of  dem- 
onstration be  a  lawful  resort  as  an  explanation  of 
facts  otherwise  inexplicable,  why  may  not  the  as- 
sumption of  a  cause  outside  of  nature  be  equally 
admissible  as  explaining  facts  for  which  nature  can- 
not furnish  an  explanation  ?  When  cool-brained 
physics  is  driven  to  transcendentalism,  it  ought  not 
to  chide  more  docile  faith  for  following.  To  those 
who  have  no  scruple  in  believing  that  they  them- 
selves can  bring  back  to  life  the  shrivelled  mummy 
of  a  boiled  animalcule,  we  may  well  retort  with  Paul, 
"  Why  should  it  be  thought  a  thing  incredible  vjith 
you  that  God  should  raise  the  dead  ? " 

But  even  within  the  range  of  the  verifiable,  it  is  to 
be  remembered  that  there  are  plaius  of  research  that 
do  not  coincide,  and  that  a  conclusion  satisfactory  in 
one  may  not  be  verifiable  in  another.  The  law  of 
crystalline  forms  is  geometric.  There  is  strong  temp-  ^ 
tation  to  prophesy  that  such  symmetry  will  be  still 
more  marked  as  we  ascend  into  the  realm  of  biologic 
forms;  but  instead,  the  chief  distinguishing  mark 
of  beginning  life  is  the  hreahing  up  of  symmetry. 
There  is  no  lack  of  harmony,  in  the  two  lines  of  phe- 
nomena, but  only  of  analogy.  In  like  manner,  the 
evolution  of  living  forms  by  no  means  necessarily 


y 


240       CHKIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

implies  the  evolution  of  the  religious  faculty.  The 
history  of  human  progress  can  no  more  safely  be  de- 
termined by  the  study  of  contemporaneous  grades  of 
society  alone  than  geology  can  be  "concluded  by  the 
study  of  superficial  geography.  Our  best  effort  in 
either  case  will  be  but  a  muddy  guess.  If  there  be 
a  spiritual  realm,  therefore,  it  may  safely  be  inferred 
that  the  certainty  of  its  phenomena  cannot  be  guar- 
anteed, nor  their  nature  perfectly  interpreted,  by 
processes  purely  physical  or  intellectual.  These  may 
create  presumptions,  or  suggest  partial  analogies,  but 
they  cannot  bring  finality ;  for  nothing  in  this  lower 
realm  is  final.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  miracles  are 
^  possible  only  to  the  believing.  Faith,  certainly,  is  a 
Scriptural  condition.  And  the  reason  is  obvious. 
No  scientific  study  of  external  conditions,  no  practised 
keenness  of  scrutiny,  can  baffle  the  incredulity  which, 
after  it  has  exhausted  the  possibilities  of  ocular  delu- 
sion, has  still  the  inexhaustible  realm  of  occult  natu- 
ral forces  without,  and  of  mental  hallucination  within, 
into  which  to  retreat.  The  Dialectical  Society  tried 
spiritualistic  phenomena,  under  precautions  satisfac- 
tory to  men  so  acute  as  Mr.  Crookes  and  Mr.  A.  R. 
Wallace,  and  they  were  content.  But  of  the  remain- 
ing scientific  world,  "  some  mocked,  and  others  said. 
We  will  hear  thee  again  of  this  matter." 

To  sum  up  these  preliminary  observations  :  it  will 
be  my  purpose  to  group  together  such  pertinent  facts 
as  I  may  be  able  to  gather  from  current  observation, 
from  monumental  records,  and  from  the  testimony  of 
men,  living  or  dead,  in  Scripture  or  elsewhere,  as  to 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT   IN   SCRIPTURE.  241 

the  "  tilings  which  they  have  seen  and  heard/'  and 
also  such  as  they  have  felt,  and  such  as  "  have  been 
most  surely  believed  among "  them ;  and  upon  such 
collection  of  facts  to  make  such  inferences  as  may 
seem  reasonable  in  themselves,  and  not  discordant 
with  growing  history. 

II.    THE   BIBLE  A   FACT   AMONG   FACTS. 

1.  The  Bible  and  Christendom.  — The  Bible  is  itself  >- 
a  fact  as  well  as  a  record  of  facts.  It  does  not  melt 
before  the  gaze,  nor  crumble  in  the  hand.  It  is  over- 
hung by  an  immense  cloud  of  subjective  personal 
experience,  more  or  less  indefinable  and  incommen- 
surable ;  it  is  wrought  into  the  foundations  of  various 
ecclesiastical  organizations ;  its  words  are  recast  into 
divers  symbols  of  faith  and  systems  of  doctrine ;  it  is 
closely  encompassed  by  a  heavy  growth  of  gloss  and 
comment ;  it  is  the  nucleus  of  an  immense  body  of 
devotional  literature ;  it  is  continually  taking  new 
phases  in  strange  languages  and  in  new  translations 
in  our  own ;  and  yet  it  is  no  more  in  danger  of  losing 
its  identity  and  concreteness  of  outline  by  reason  of 
these  concomitants,  than  the  light-house  by  reason 
of  the  floods  of  light  it  sheds,  or  the  tree  by  reason 
of  the  fruit  it  bears.  Unlike  the  Hindoo  sacred 
books,  —  of  which  the  original  outline  is  gone,  the 
substance  being  transmuted  indistinguishably  into  the 
parasitic  growth  of  comment  that  has  infested  and 
consumed  them,  —  it  bears  but  is  not  overborne.  Like 
flower  and  bee,  sealed  up  for  future  generations  in  the 

16 


^ 


242       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

amber  of  geology,  the  Old  Testament  was  deposited 
ill  the  Hebrew,  which  forthwith  congealed,  escaping 
henceforth  the  mutations  of  a  li^dng  tongue ;  and  the 
/  New  Testament  in  the  more  fluent  Greek  (copied  by 
many  independent  writers,  whose  very  errors  were  to 
*  become  in  time,  by  interlacing  testimony,  reaffirma- 
tory  of  the  true  text)  was  unwittingly  hidden  from 
VL  /the  tampering  or  curious  hand  in  dismembered  sheets, 
under  prosaic  monkish  essays,  until  the  Greek  lan- 
guage was  also  dead,  and  movable  type  ready  to  liide 
it  from  mutilation  by  stereotyped  publicity.  Then 
came  forth  the  New  and  the  Old  Testament,  linked 
henceforth  in  double  and  abiding  testimony,  —  one 
book,  the  Book,  to  work  its  marvellous  ministry  in 
the  earth. 

If  its  errors  be  fatal,  they  cannot  be  remedied,  for 
they  are  adamantine.  No  "ingenuity  of  exegesis" 
can  avert  the  peril,  for  the  original  is  in  no  cabalistic 
tongue,  but  is  open  to  all  scholarship.  It  seems, 
moreover,  by  the  very  sobriety  and  concreteness  of  its 
statements,  to  thrust  itself  purposely,  as  it  has  done 
actually,  as  a  "  stumbling-block "  in  the  way  of  all 
travellers  on  the  road  to  truth,  which  they  may  build 
upon  or  fall  upon,  but  cannot  miss. 

Coextensive  with  the  book  is  the  realm  which  is 
characteristically  known  as  Christendom.  It  has  a 
distinct  geographical  area  (the  boundaries  at  least  as 
clearly  traceable  as  the  kingdoms  of  physical  science), 
a  distinct  literature,  and  civilization  dominated  by 
distinct  ideas.  I  do  not  at  this  point  assume  that 
the  Bible  is  the  root  of  these ;  but  only  mark  the 


THE  HISTORIC   ELEMENT   IN   SCRIPTURE.  243 

exact  coincidence  of  their  range  and  the  intimacy  of 
their  relation. 

2.  The  Old  Testament  and  the  Jews.  —  If  Christen- 
dom be  an  anomaly  in  the  world,  the  Jews  in  Chris- 
tendom and  the  world  are  no  less  anomalous,  —  a 
people  without  a  country,  without  a  civil  nucleus, 
without  a  temple  ;  a  race  poured  out  like  a  river  into 
the  Salter  sea,  yet  preserving  its  outline  and  its  fresh- 
ness to  the  farthest  shore ;  malleable  everywhere  in 
the  furnace  and  beneath  the  hammer  of  civil,  social, 
and  commercial  custom,  yet  with  domestic  fibre  ut- 
terly unbroken.  So  conspicuously  do  the  old  traits 
reappear,  producing  historic  verisimilitude,  that  the 
mythic  philosopher  of  the  future  can  choose  no  fairer 
field  than  the  essays  of  Macaulay,  or  the  recent  ap- 
peal to  the  Prussian  king,  placed  beside  the  Scripture, 
to  persuade  the  reader  that  the  Scripture  record  was 
later  than  the  nineteenth  century,  or  that  the  record 
of  our  current  history  was  mythical.  For  in  Macau- 
lay's  time  we  find  Mordecai  still  "  sitting  at  the 
king's  gate,"  and  the  essayist  answering  Haman's 
appeal  against  this  alien  people,  "whose  laws  are 
diverse  from  all  people ;  neither  keep  they  the  king's 
laws."  And  in  the  appeal  of  the  German  people  we 
find  the  old  Egyptian  terror,  because  "the  children  ot 
Israel  were  fruitful  and  increased  abundantly,  and 
multiplied  and  waxed  exceeding  mighty,  and  the  land 
was  filled  with  them."  Still,  as  of  old,  they  seem  to 
"dwell  in  tents,"  or  rather,  as  when  prepared  for  flight 
from  Egypt,  with  "  loins  girded,  shoes  on  feet,  and 
staff  in  hand,"  as  those  who  are  "  in  haste."     For,  as 


244       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

Professor  Freeman  explains,  their  persecutions  have 
always  arisen  from  their  being  aliens,  and  as  aliens 
having  no  power  to  hold  realty,  but  compelled  to 
hoard  their  possessions  in  gold.  Being  thus  by  com- 
pulsion sojourners  and  capitalists,  their  presence  has 
always  inspired  hate.  Yet  again,  as  in  Egypt,  "  the 
more  they  afflicted  them  the  more  they  multiplied 
-I  and  grew."  Trodden  under  foot,  ground  to  powder, 
scattered  as  chaff  by  the  wind,  their  toughness  has 
been  the  wonder  of  historians  and  the  problem  of 
ethnologists.  "The  Jew  almost  alone,"  says  Professor 
Freeman  again,  "  is  sure  of  his  pure  blood  "  among  all 
the  nations. 

And  now,  again,  precisely  coincident  with  Judaism 
is  the  Old  Testament,  treasured  and  read,  not  in  mod- 
ern vernacular,  nor  in  the  Septuagint  Greek,  although 
that  is  the  work  of  their  own  scholars,  but  in  the 
ancient  and,  as  they  insist,  the  original  Hebrew. 
The  splendor  of  their  ancient  ritual  is  gone ;  they 
speak  many  new  languages,  and  wander  amid  strange 
peoples,  surrendering  much  to  courtesy  or  to  rapa- 
city ;  but  their  ancient  Scripture  they  will  not  sur- 
render. They  find  in  it  the  core  of  genealogical  pride, 
patriotism,  political  aspiration,  and  religion. 

3.  The  Bible  in  delation  to  Current  Facts.  —  That 
there  must  be  something  more  than  a  mere  casual 
relation  between  the  Bible  and  Christendom  on  tlie 
/  one  hand,  and  the  Old  Testament  and  Judaism  on  the 
other,  will,  I  think,  be  a  natural  suggestion  to  any 
candid  mind.  That  the  jagged  edges  of  two  sheets 
match  here  and  there  may  be  meaningless;  but  that 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT   IX   SCRIPTURE.  245 

the  irregular  outline  matches  at  every  point,  satisfies 

the  legal  mind  that  they  are  counterparts,  and  that        ^ 

their  common  indenture  was  designed. 

Kow,  not  only  has  the  trend  of  progress  been  uni- 
formly westward,  outlining  by  its  course  the  control- 
linix  influence  of  the  Bible,  as  lines  of  verdure  down 
tlie  mountain's  side  in  hot  countries  reveal  the  course 
of  the  running  stream ;  not  only  does  the  world's  his- 
tory break  asunder,  as  the  Bible  does,  the  one  parting 
between  the  old  Asiatic  and  the  new  European 
regime,  as  the  other  does  between  the  Old  Testament 
and  the  New,  and  at  the  very  same  era,  —  an  era 
thenceforth  stamped  indelibly  on  all  our  coin  and 
in  all  our  literature,  as  though  in  perpetual  reminder  y 
that  the  Lord  and  not  Caesar,  by  his  stamp  and  super-*^ 
scription,  claims  these  ages  as  his  own.  All  this 
might  possibly  be  attributed  to  a  concurrence  of  nat- 
ural causes, —  the  steady  westward  course  to  the  uni- 
form tidal  drift  of  all  terrestrial  things  following  the 
sun  (although  the  earlier  migrations  were  clearly  in 
diverse  directions) ;  and  the  change  of  civilization  to 
a  change  of  landscape,  soil,  and  climate,  although  a 
like  migration  into  the  tempting  Indian  peninsula 
had  ended  only  in  a  curdling  lethargy. 

But  other  circumstances  to  which  I  have  alluded 
cannot  be  so  explained.  In  the  midst  of  this  heav- 
ing flood,  in  which  the  ancient  and  petrified  distinc- 
tions of  language,  race,  custom,  and  traditions  are  /\ 
lifted  on  the  tumultuous  wave,  dashed  against  each 
other,  and  disappear,  the  mysterious  Jew,  tossed  with 
the  rest,  and  often  submerged,  alone,  of  all  peoples. 


246       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

drifts  on  -unbroken  and  unchanged.  His  phlegmatic 
conservatism  is  not  due  to  his  Semitic  blood  ;  for  no 
nation  of  antiquity  was  more  daring  or  progressive 
than  the  Phoenician,  and  none  in  modern  times  more 
aggressive  than  the  Arabian.     It  is  not  due  to  isola- 

s^tion  in  business  or  life.  He  mixes  in,  and  is  pressed 
upon,  by  our  civilization  as  by  an  atmosphere.  Yet, 
while  all  other  sects  mingle,  he  resists  intermarriage ; 
European  or  American  in  sojourn,  he "  remains  an 
Asiatic  in  temper;  transplanted  out  of  the  conge- 
nial past,  he  grows  as  an  exotic  in  the  unfriendly 
present,  living  a  kind  of  posthumous  life,  a  bush 
•  consuming  yet  forever  unconsumed,  like  that  which 
Moses  saw\  As  the  explanation  of  this  anomaly, — 
this  strange  figure,  looming  against  the  horizon,  among 
the  whirling  winds,  spectral  as  a  cloud,  yet  adaman- 
tine in  outline,  —  I  behold,  clutched  tightly  in  his 
hand,  the  ancient  book  which  he  himself  accounts  at 
once  the  record  of  his  past,  and  the  key  to  his 
present,  existence. 

4.  Origiii  of  the  Bible.  —  That  it  is  not  the  nor- 
mal product  of  his  national  genius,  no  one  will  need 

7^"^  to  be  assured  who  familiarizes  himself  with  the  Tal- 
mudic  literature.  The  hand  that  in  maturity  pro- 
ducked  such  tawdry  colors  and  incoherent  forms,  could 
never  have  created  with  unguided  pencil  the  tranquil 
landscape  of  the  twenty-third  Psalm,  or  the  Titanic 
splendors  of  Habakkuk's  vision.  That  the  Jew  did 
not  even  comprehend  the  inner  meaning  of  the  price- 
less "  oracles  "  committed  to  him,  is  confirmed  by  his 
rejection  of  the  plainly  prophesied  Messiah.      His 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT  IN   SCRIPTURE.         247 

arrested  development  at  that  point,  and  the  simulta- 
neous outburst  of  new  life  in  the  believing  Gentile 
world,  clearly  reveal  the  terribleness  of  his  mistake. 
The  book  of  which  he,  as  the  original  custodian,  thence- 
forth survives  to  be  the  appropriate  witness,  itself 
describes  in  prophecy  his  blind  refusal  and  its  conse- 
quence, —  the  forfeiture  of  his  inheritance  and  the 
transfer  of  his  destiny.  Wearing  the  tallith  in  thej^ 
synagogue  to-day,  he  unw^ittingly  republishes  to  every 
looker-on  the  Apostle's  sad  words,  "  the  veil  is  upon 
their  heart." 

That  their  unique  persistence  against  the  tooth  of 
time  is  due  solely  to  their  Messianic  hope,  seems  so 
indisputable  to  Dr.  Draper  that  in  his  book  on  the 
"  Development  of  Civil  Policy  in  America "  he  in- 
stances them,  at  the  expense  of  his  whole  argument, 
as  illustrating  the  power  of  an  idea  to  master  and 
reverse  the  otherwise  overwhelming  sway  of  Buckle's 
law.  But  the  Messianic  prophecy  lies  among  the 
very  germs  of  their  history,  and  is  interwoven  with 
and  moulds  their  whole  record.  It  was  not  the  fruit, 
but  the  root,  of  their  development. 

Professor  Freeman  also  is  so  struck  with  the  fact 
that  their  history  is  phenomenal  —  not  having  been 
shaped  from  without  by  natural  force,  but  nucleated 
and  vitalized  from  within  by  this  extraordinary  book  < 
—  that  he  declares  theirs  "  the  strongest  case  in  all  ^^ 
history  of  a  nation  preserved  in  its  purity  by  a 
marked  and  special  religion."  The  case  seems  clear, 
then,  that  the  destiny  of  this  "  peculiar  people,"  lying 
outside  the  range  of  philosophic  canons,  has   been 


^■^  ^  248       CHRIST  AND  MODEEN  THOUGHT. 

^    developed  in  immediate  connection  with  the  book 
.  Y *    which  was  so  long  its  special  care,  and  which,  though 
^     now  a  Gentile  legacy,  it  still  lingers  to  watch  and 
^^    confirm. 

M  5.  The  Bible  and  Modern  History.  —  To  treat  ade- 
quately  upon  the  multiform  relations  of  the  Bible  to 
modern  history  would  be  to  honeycomb  the  whole  realm 
of  literature,  science,  art,  politics,  and  domestic  life. 
/It  is,  as  Professor  Tyndall  says,  the  "  unquestionable 
antecedent "  of  our  whole  civilization.  As  flint  in  the 
soil  at  the  root  hides  itself  in  the  texture  of  wheat  stem 
X  V  and  oak,  so  the  Bibles  of  Luther  and  Wickliff  and  their 
^jsF^  compeers,  planted  at  the  bottom  of  our  printed  litera- 
ture, put  fibre  into  and  determined  the  very  forms  of 
speech  through  which  State,  school, and  individual  liave 
poured  their  thoughts.  The  documents  of  diplomacy, 
judicial  formulas,  parliamentary  routine,  bear  direct 
'traces  of  Bible  orio^in.  It  would  be  interestinir  to 
mark  out,  as  time  will  not  allow,  the  trend  of  the 
great  courses  of  achievement  in  modern  times ;  to 
observe  how  closely,  as  to  period,  they  have  coin- 
cided with  eras  of  increased  religious  activity,  and 
how  far,  as  to  great  names,  they  have  taken  in  believ- 
ers and  students  of  the  Scripture.  The  men  who 
have  seen  deepest  into  the  mystery  of  things,  and 
caught  most  of  the  prophetic  breath  of  the  coming 
morning,  —  such  as  Bacon,  Kepler,  Newton,  Faraday, 
"^  and  others,  —  were  earnest  students  of  the  Book  in 
which  they  devoutly  believed  the  heavens  were  truly 
reflected,  and  the  earth's  mysteries  an  "open  secret." 
I  trust  a  further  study  of  the  contents  of  the  Bible 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT   IN   SCRIPTURE.  249 

itself  may  vindicate  tlie  suggestion,  that  there  is  more 
than  a  casual  coincidence  in  this  fact. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  how  inevitably  candid 
inquiry  brings  men  back,  by  however  circuitous  a 
road,  to  the  cardinal  doctrines  of  the  New  Testament 
as  the  true  goal  of  human  perfectness.  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer,  building  his  colossal  system  of  synthetic 
philosophy,  after  so  wide  and  careful  exploration, 
finds  the  tremendous  pymmid  converging  at  its  top- 
most point  to  the  truth  which  a  "  little  child  "  might 
at  the  beginning  get  from  Scripture.  For  in  his 
"  Data  of  Ethics  "  lie  sums  up  all  in  the  humble  hope 
and  faith  that  "  some  reasoned  form  of  the  ethics  of  ^ 
the  New  Testament"  may  yet  become  the  life-core  of 
society.  He  thus  declares  that  this  wonderful  book, 
which  has  preceded  the  modern  era,  is  still  in  advance  . 
of  it,  and  its  sublime  ideal  as  yet  unreached.  Con-^ 
sidering  how  slowly  moral  ideas  are  evolved,  and  the 
specially  depressed  condition  of  human  society  when 
the  New  Testament  was  written,  the  problem  still 
remains  unsolved,  how,  out  of  the  least  cultivated 
nation  of  that  inferior  age,  there  issued  an  ideal  to 
which  the  nineteenth  century  looks  up  as  still  tran- 
scending its  best  attainments. 

The  conclusion  seems  fair,  that  some  element  un- 
explained and  as  yet  inexplicable  enters  into  the 
origin  of  these  phenomena.  The  book  did  not  "  fall 
down  from  Jupiter"  like  the  Ephesian  image,  it  grewX 
on  earth ;  it  was  not  written  upon  the  sky  in  fire,  but 
in  human  language  in  the  earthly  page ;  but  though 
written  by  "  hand  of  man,"  it  seems  to  have  been 


250       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

"under  the  wing  of  the  cherubim;"  its  fruits  and 
its  unaccountable  origin  place  it  beyond  the  range  of 
mere  human  phenomena. 

III.   HISTORIC  INSIGHT. 

From  the  relations  of  the  Bible  let  us  turn  to  its 
contents,  seeking  to  learn  thereby  the  secret  of  such 
power. 

1.  The  historic  element  is  unmistakable  and  con- 
spicuous ;  it  may  even  be  said  to  be  the  controlling 
feature.  For  where,  as  in  the  Psalms  or  the  Epistles, 
it  does  not  take  an  avowed  historic  form,  still  it  is 
instinct  with  the  inner  life  of  historic  characters,  and 
so  a  record  of  current  facts,  not  the  idle  play  of 
fancy.  Indeed,  in  these  features  it  supplies  just  those 
elements  essential  to  the  true  picture  of  tlie  passing 
time ;  elements  once  neglected,  but,  since  Macaulay's 
day,  recognized  as  essential  to  the  very  nature  of  true 
history.  How  diversified  in  authorship,  in  era,  in 
locality,  and  in  form :  compendious  statemxcnts  of 
scientific  truth ;  genealogies ;  state  documents,  like 
the  Chronicles;  idyls,  like  Euth;  statutes,  like  Le- 
viticus ;  epics,  like  Job  ;  lyric  and  didactic  verse  in 
Psalms ;  concrete  earthly  wisdom  in  Proverbs ;  pessi- 
mistic sighs  in  Ecclesiastes ;  commingled  history, 
poetry,  and  oratory,  as  in  the  Prophets ;  unstudied 
memoirs  in  the  Gospels ;  equally  artless  records  of 
travel  and  experience  in  the  Acts ;  Epistles  whicli 
uncover  the  social  and  individual  heart-history  of 
the  time ;  and  the  gorgeous  vision  of  the  evening, 
passing  through  night  to  morning,  at  the  end ! 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT  IN   SCRIPTURE.  251 

But  the  record  is  as  compreheTisive  as  it  is  diverse, 
and  being  so  comprehensive,  how  compact  and  clear 
in  outline  !  llemember  the  grim  criticism  of  Carlyle 
upon  the  disproportionate  verbiage  of  our  time  com-X 
pared  with  the  severe  sententiousness  of  the  Penta- 
teuch. In  the  hands  of  our  modern  chroniclers,  he 
says,  "the  account  of  the  burning  of  a  Brunswick  , 
theatre  takes  more  space  than  the  creation  of  a  world."  '^ 
As  the  quick  sweep  of  Giotto's  circle  enclosed  the 
rich  revelations  of  his  genius,  as  the  oak  lies  in  the 
acorn,  so  the  whole  Bible  lies  folded  in  the  germinal 
sentence  with  which  it  begins.  Mark  the  order  of 
the  unfolding  universe :  the  spirit  moves,  the  word 
is  spoken,  the  firmament  is  7nade.  We  indeed  ap- 
proach these  facts  in  an  inverse  order,  "  first  natural, 
then  spiritual ; "  but  every  new  age  makes  clearer  the 
truth  that  the  coarser  elements  are  the  vehicles  of 
the  more  subtile,  —  the  spiritual  was  before,  and  is 
beneath,  the  material.  In  the  light  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  when  matter  dissolved  reveals  light,  heat,  and 
electricity,  and  these  again  unwoven  blend  into  the  w 
latest  and  central  word  of  science,  "  motion,"  as  the 
primal  font  of  things,  how  strange  to  find  this  last 
word  of  science  the  first  of  Scripture !  Again,  in 
this  time,  when  a  vjord  changes  the  boundaries  and 
destinies  of  empires,  holds  the  ponderous  enginery  in 
check  or  dashes  it  through  the  land,  sends  light-  , 
nings  that  they  may  go  and  say,  "  Here  we  are ; " 
when  brute  force  has  receded  and  mind  is  supreme,  — 
how  noticeable  that  so  long  ago,  in  the  very  shadow 
of  the  massive  p}Tamids,  and  of  the  Titanic  despotism 


252       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

lying,  like  them,  heavy  on  heart  and  hope,  there  came 
a  vision  so  clear  of  a  fact  so  deeply  hidden,  that  might- 
ier than  the  hand,  the  body's  veliicle  of  power,  is  the 
word,  the  utterance  of  the  soul. 

The  record  thus  beginning  at  the  centre  sweeps 
the  whole  circumference  of  history.  It  takes  in  the 
world,  the  race,  the  outer  and  the  inner  life.  It  ac- 
counts nothing  insignificant  or  foreign  that  reveals  a 
significant  phase  of  human  experience. 

Yet,  again,  though  so  all-embracing,  how  sym- 
metrically complete.  It  does  not,  like  the  childish 
Herodotus,  pour  an  unassorted  flood  of  gossip  through 
its  pages.  It  finds  all  history  vertebrate,  and  along  that 
vertebral  line  it  moves,  revealing  the  whole  structure 
of  the  typical  past.  The  Cainite  races,  the  massive 
Egyptian,  Chaldean,  and  Ninevite  civilizations,  the 
various  changing  fortunes  of  the  world  at  large,  are 
not  overlooked,  but  put  in  their  incidental  and  sub- 
ordinate place ;  and  so  the  perspective  of  history, 
unknown  to  the  classic  writers  of  a  far  later  day,  is 
recognized  -and  preserved. 

2.  Four  widerlying  ideas  reveal  themselves,  namely : 

a.  The  idea  of  structural  unity.  The  universe  is 
one  :  the  groups  in  creation  are  single,  yet  make  a 
complex  unity ;  the  human  race  is  one ;  language  is 
one ;  the  Old  Testament  is  one,  sharply  outlined,  in 
its  dominant  conception  of  the  cor'^orate  and  external, 
from  the  New  Testament,  which  is  equally  nucleated 
round  the  individual  and  internal  life. 

This  sense  of  a  pervading  mental  order  is  revealed 
also  in  the  use  of  the  type  as  representing  the  whole. 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT  IN   SCRIPTURE.  253 

Israel  is  equally  the  man  and  the  nation,  and  the 
nation  reveals  mankind.  All  history,  thus  having  a 
symmetrical  order,  becomes,  as  Paul  describes  it  in 
the  case  of  Hagar,  an  "  allegory."  All  nature  be- 
comes, as  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  a  "parable." 
"  How,  then,"  said  he,  "  will  ye  understand  all  para- 
bles ? "  The  whole  universe  becomes  a  cryptogram,  a 
"  seven-sealed  roll,"  which  no  man  by  earthly  wisdom 
alone  shall  "  prevail  to  open,"  but  which  may  be 
unfolded,  as  in  Patmos,  to  the  devoutly  open  soul. 

b.  Historic  continuity.  The  horizontal  section  of 
the  plant  gives  a  glimpse  of  its  structural  secret  in 
ringed  bark  and  curiously  forming  core;  but  the 
revelation  is  incomplete  without  the  vertical  section 
also  from  root  to  fruit,  containing  "  seed  after  its  kind." 
The  one  gives  the  mental,  the  other  the  natural  order. 
The  study  of  isolated  facts  is  incomplete  and  mis- 
leading ;  and  it  can  be  remedied  only  wlien,  having 
studied  upwards  and  downwards,  as  well  as  right 
and  left,  our  knowledge,  like  the  perfect  city,  "  lieth 
four  square,  its  length  and  breadth  and  depth  and 
height"  being  "equal."  Geology  must  supjplement 
geography. 

In  the  history  of  man  the  study  of  contempora- 
neous social  phenomena,  ignoring  the  growing  past, 
is  in  the  literal  sense  of  the  word  superficial.  For  it 
is  man's  special  prerogative,  as  "  a  creature  of  large 
discourse,"  to  look  "  before  and  after." 

Now,  the  sense  of  the  importance  of  historic  order 
and  continuity  is  specially  pnmiinent  in  Scripture. 
From  Genesis  to  Kevelation  there  is  a  steady  flow, 


254      CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

broken  only  at  points  such  as  the  flood,  and  the  gap 
between  Old  and  New,  where  the  breach  is  itself 
significant.  The  minuteness  and  emphasis  of  the 
genealogical  record  is  conspicuous.  Indeed,  it  seems 
sometimes,  as  in  the  broad  wastes  before  the  flood,  to 
have  scarcely  any  other  purpose  than  by  its  scanti- 
ness of  detail  —  as  that  "A  begat  B"  and  died — to 
remind  us  how  vacuous  the  period  was,  but  by  the 
fidelity  of  the  record  to  suggest  the  significance  of 
unbroken  continuity.  The  recapitulation  of  the  regis- 
ter at  the  beginning  of  Chronicles  and  the  Evange- 
lists impresses  us  in  like  manner.  We  cannot  fail, 
either,  to  notice  the  precisely  logical  order  in  which 
the  necessarily  antecedent  forms  take  their  place  in 
the  creative  growth,  —  the  simpler  preceding  the  more 
complex,  —  and  how  in  the  unfolding  of  institutions 
there  is  an  adapted  progress,  as  they  "are  able  to 
bear  it."  The  line  of  progress  is  a  growth,  and  not 
a  mere  superposition;  hence  every  stage  and  item  is 
significant. 

c.  Material  and  intellectual  progress  hy  empirical 
processes.  The  first  man  was  houseless,  and  even 
tentless,  garmentless,  toolless,  without  writing  or  in- 
telligent speech.  He  named  the  animals  experiment- 
ally ;  he  learned  the  awful  secret  of  evil  by  the  shock 
that  threw  his  faculties  off  their  spiritual  centre,  and 
his  whole  being  out  of  gear  with  the  universe,  thence- 
forth "  dim  sounding  on  its  perilous  way."  Outside 
Eden,  tools,  tents,  and  music  were  invented.  The 
nomadic  emerged  into  a  more  settled  life ;  the  taber- 
nacle took  root  and  solidified  into  a  temple;  tribes 


THE  HISTORIC  ELEMENT  IN  SCRIPTURE.  255 

became  a  nation,  and  rural  life  and  patriarchal  sim- 
plicity gave  place  to  the  city,  the  tribunal,  and  the 
king.  The  "  one  lip  and  one  stock  of  words  "  of  the 
early  world  grew  into  dialectic  divergence,  not  by 
the  abrogation  of  the  "  stock  of  words,"  but  by  "  con- 
fusion of  lip  ; "  so  that  phonetic  reconstruction  should 
show  (as  historically  it  does)  the  traces  of  a  common 
primeval  capital  of  speech,  wrought  into  new  lan- 
guages, as  the  mutilated  arches  and  columns  of 
ancient  temples  have  been  wrought  into  the  struc- 
tures of  later  times.  The  accumulating  knowledge 
of  the  fathers  transferred  to  the  children,  as  is  often 
reiterated,  is  by  them  passed  on,  with  elements  added 
out  of  new  experience,  to  their  posterity,  and  so  the 
"education  of  the  race"  (which  is  the  idea  not  of 
Lessing,  in  its  inception,  but  of  Paul)  went  on. 

d.  Religious  retrogression  from  ethical  monotheism 
hy  intellectual  apostasy,  and  moral  suffocation  under 
the  weight  of  the  'physical.  Paul,  in  the  first  chapter 
of  Eomans,  makes  a  most  logical  inductive  argument 
to  show  that  heathenism  bears  the  marks  and  shows 
the  fruits  of  apostasy.  He  points  to  the  indisputable 
moral  degradation  and  the  mental  bewilderment  of  the 
time,  and  traces  it  back  to  the  repudiation  of  an  origi- 
nal knowledge  which  they  "  did  not  like  to  retain." 
This  is  an  inverse  statement  of  the  facts  as  given  in 
the  historic  record.  The  new-born  man,  uncultured 
and  unripe,  knew  God  by  a  direct  intuition  which  is 
not  further  explained.  Issuing  from  the  fatal  gate  of 
departed  "  purity  of  heart,"  he  no  longer  "  sees  God," 
but  "gropes  after  liim."     Forthwith  appear   chaotic 


256      CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

violence,  animalism,  —  for  they  are  ''jieshl'  —  and  the 
cleansing  flood. 

Out  of  pervading  idolatry  Abraham  is  lifted.  Israel 
perpetually  topples  into  it  as  into  an  ever-surround- 
ing gulf  of  corruption,  until  after  long  vicissitudes 
they  are  carried  away  into  Babylon.  There  is  here  a 
marked  antithesis  between  the  successive  stages  of 
the  intellectual  and  material  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  religious  on  the  other,  —  advance  on  the  whole 
in  the  one,  but  equally  definite  decay  in  the  other. 

3.  Verification  hy  Modern  Research.  —  Now,  set  this 
early  conception  of  the  inward  anatomy  and  physi- 
ology of  history  beside  the  ultimate  conclusions  of  the 
centuries  accumulating  testimony  to  this  day. 

a.  Nothing  is  more  conspicuous  in  modern  methods 
than  the  introduction  of  the  comparative  element  as 
enlarging  and  correcting  the  judgment  upon  single 
facts.  Chemistry  does  not  ignore  the  help  of  physi- 
ology, nor  philology  that  of  ethnology.  The  valley 
dweller  cannot  hope  to  judge  the  world  without 
climbing  the  mountain-top  for  a  wider  horizon. 
Under  that  broader  gaze  the  broken  threads  unite 
into  a  continuous  design,  —  the  mob  of  eccentric 
forms  and  forces  fall  into  companies,  regiments,  divi- 
sions, and  all  wheel  into  line.  The  tangled  meshes 
of  the  heavens  are  threaded  out,  the  harp  restrung, 
and  under  Kepler's  touch  the  morning  stars  again 
break  into  song.  It  is  upon  the  recognition  of  an 
underlying  mental  order,  so  rigorous  that  a  single 
understood  type  becomes  the  key,  —  as  when  the 
bleachinfj  skull  took  Oken  into  its  confidence,  whis- 


THE   HISTORIC    ELEMENT   IN   SCRIPTURE.  257 

pering  its  secret  to  him,  and  the  leaf  grew  transparent 
to  the  inseeing  Goethe,  —  that  science  itself  becomes 
possible.  The  more  widely  the  sciences  combine,  the 
more  manifest  the  convergence  toward  a  scientia 
scientiarum,  around  whose  single  centre  these  dis- 
jointed arcs  of  knowledge  may  connect  in  an  un- 
broken circle. 

h.  But  science  lias  found  its  need  as  much  of  history 
as  of  comparison.  Its  results  in  morphologic  study 
are  incomplete.  It  must  know  genetic  relation  also  ; 
its  classification  is  not  simply  artificial,  disclosing 
an  ideal  order,  but  natural,  because  there  is  a  real 
order.  Hence  the  emphasis  upon  all  problems  of 
origin,  heredity,  and  growth.  All  studies  tend  to 
become  historic.  Humboldt  and  Ritter  cannot  under- 
stand the  superficial  cosmos,  without  lifting  the  crust 
of  the  earth,  to  study  the  underworking  forces  in  their 
stratified  historic  chronicle.  They  see  that  the  gaze 
must  be  deeper  as  well  as  wider,  if  they  want  the 
absolute  truth  of  things.  They  find  that  knowledge 
must  be  also  vertical.  The  scientific  New  Jerusalem, 
too,  "  lieth  four  square." 

c.  I  need  scarcely  here  dwell  for  a  moment  upon  the 
further  thought  so  well  emphasized  in  our  time, — 
the  corner-stone  of  the  system  which  Mr.  Buckle,  Sir 
John  Lubbock,  and  others  have  wrought  to  such  top- 
heavy  proportions,  —  that  our  civilization  is  normally 
the  j^roduct  'of  antecedent  matericd  and  intellectucd 
conditions.  It  is  plain  that  without  telescope  and 
microscope,  opening  our  vision  into  the  two  worlds, 
hidden,  one  by  its  greatness  and  the  other  by  its 

17 


258       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

smallness,  from  our  natural  vision,  the  sweepingly 
inductive  conviction  of  the  all-pervading  unity  v^^ould 
not  have  naturally  arisen.  While  the  boundaries  of 
the  earth  were  unknown,  its  symmetrical  structure 
could  not  be  learned.  Until,  by  long  preparation,  the 
social  soil  was  fit  for  the  seed,  it  could  not  grow. 
Imperfect  statutes  alone  could  befit  imperfect  .Israel. 
They  w^ere  not  the  best,  but  the  best  possible,  consid- 
ering "  the  hardness  of  their  hearts." 

I  think  it  not  inapt,  therefore,  to  conclude  that 
the  marvellous  insight  which  penetrated  the  fluent 
SBcret  of  this  mysterious  complex  of  nature  and  hu- 
manity, long  before  such  vision  could  come  in  the 
order  of  natural  development,  —  which  saw  the  whole 
plant,  leaf,  flower,  and  fruit  in  the  seed  "  before  it 
grew,"  —  was,  somehow,  touched  with  an  element  in- 
commensurate with  known  and  explored  causes. 

Is  it  rash  to  suggest  that  the  eye,  which  gets  to-day 
telescopic  help  beyond  itself  to  range  among  the  stars, 
may  then  have  been  enlarged  by  him  who  "  made  the 
stars  also,"  and  who  ''formed  the  eye  "  ? 

d.  From  every  side  direct  testimony  gathers,  to  the 
fact  of  a  Primitive  Monotheism  afterwards  corrupted. 
The  monuments  of  Egypt,  the  ancient  literature  of 
India  and  Persia,  the  persistence  of  the  original 
name  of  the  "  Heaven  Father  "  from  before  the  Aryan 
dispersion  to  our  day  (Dyaus  piter,  Zeus  Pater,  Jupiter, 
Unser  Yater,  Our  Father),  all  combine  to*  confirm  the 
accuracy  of  the  Scriptural  statement.  And  this  is 
the  more  noticeable  because  the  exigency  of  modern 
theories  had  demanded,  and  their  defenders  had  even 


THE  HISTORIC   ELEMENT  IN   SCRIPTURE.  259 

passionately  asserted,  a  contrary  view.  But  that  the 
believing  in  one  God  will  not  'alone  purify  or  perfect 
men,  all  history  likewise  assures  us.  The  stagnancy 
of  Hinduism,  the  barrenness  of  Mohammedanism, 
the  decay  of  Persian  civilization,  are  sufficient  wit- 
nesses. 

Not  only  is  ethnic  monotheism  unfruitful  in  na- 
tional life,  it  is  not  even  self-preservative.  Human 
nature  seeks  after  a  "  sign,"  —  a  visible  fragment  of 
the  Divine,  —  and  slowly  gravitates  to  the  substitution 
of  that  for  God.  Thus  in  Athens,  at  its  intellectual 
highest,  religion  is  at  its  lowest.  It  was  "easier" 
there  "  to  find  a  god  than  a  man,"  yet  there  was  the 
altar  "  to  the  Unknown  God." 

IV.    HISTORIC   FORESIGHT. 

1.  Fads. — a.  Concreteness.  Christianity,  says  Dean 
Stanley,  "alone,  of  all  religions,  claims  to  hefoicnd£d, 
not  on  fancy  or  feeling,  hut  on  fact  and  truth!'  The 
sobriety  of  tone,  the  circumstantiality,  the  precise, 
identification  of  locality  and  person  by  name,  are 
specially  remarkable  in  the  Scripture  record ;  because 
it  is  in  these  respects  in  contrast  with  the  Oriental 
temper,  and  specially  with  the  other  sacred  books  of 
the  East.  The  earlier  part  of  Genesis  is  sometimes, 
indeed,  called  poetic,  and  this  term  is  thought  to  carry 
with  it  a  vague  impeachment  of  its  historic  character. 
But  to  suppose  that  prose  and  poetry  are  synonymous 
relatively  with  truth  and  fiction,  so  that  the  poetic  form 
makes  false  a  statement  which  in  prosaic  form  would 
be  true,  is  like  insisting  that  no  portrait  is  trustworthy 


260       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

which  has  not  been  laid  out  with  rule  and  calipers. 
Poetry,  it  is  true,  deals  largely  in  the  symbolic ;  but 
it  sometimes  happens  that  the  symbolic  is  the  most 
direct,  if  not  the  only  possible  form  by  which  the 
truth  can  be  conveyed.  "  God  said.  Let  there  be 
light."  How  can  the  truth  be  more  wisely  shaped  in 
words  ?  Creation  is  beyond  our  analysis ;  but  the 
energy  which  through  imparted  force  produces  light 
has  its  analogue  in  the  human  will,  and  the  nakedest 
forthgoing  of  a  will  is  in  a  word.  "  In  the  word  of  a 
king  there  is  power."  No  physical  formula,  no  philo- 
sophic circumlocution,  can  rival  the  accuracy  of  the 
world-old  record,  in  whose  sublimely  simple  utter- 
ance God's  personality  bursts  into  recognition,  as 
light  into  the  world. 

The  tendency  to  hero-worship  and  myth-making 
seems  to  be  recognized  and  protested  against  in  the 
case  of  Moses  and  Elijah,  the  two  most  likely  candi- 
dates for  apotheosis,  by  the  unflinching  disclosure  of 
their  frailties,  —  the  emphatic  after-reference  to  Moses 
as  only  a  "  servant,"  and  Elijah  as  a  "  man  of  like 
passions  "  with  us,  —  and  by  the  clear  statement  how 
tliey  were  taken  out  of  the  reach  of  adoration  while 
still  men.  Not  only  does  the  later  Scripture  recog- 
nize the  literalness  of  the  earlier,  it  insists  upon  and 
emphasizes  it.  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  assumes 
the  reality  of  a  former  law-giving ;  the  doom  of  Sodom 
is  made  the  basis  of  present  warning.  Paul's  argu- 
ment in  the  Eoman  Epistle  loses  its  leverage  if  there 
were  no  actual  Adam,  and  he  unliesitatingly  rests  the 
whole  trustworthiness  of  the  gospel  on  the  literal 


THE  HISTORIC   ELEMENT  IN   SCRIPTURE.  261 

resurrection  of  Christ  from  the  dead.  Mark  the 
emphasis  which  Peter  and  John  lay,  in  their  Epistles, 
on  the  fact  that  theirs  is  original  testimony,  verified 
by  eye  and  ear  and  hand,  to  the  "  flesh  and  blood  " 
reality  of  the  incarnation  and  resurrection,  and  not 
the  outgrowth  of  "  cunningly  devised  mytlisr  So  inex- 
tricably are  the  doctrines,  the  promises,  and  the  claims 
of  the  Bible  intertwined  into  its  record  of  fact,  that 
the  effort  to  disentangle  is  sure  to  destroy  them.  To 
surrender  the  fidelity  of  the  history  in  the  Bible  is  to 
surrender  the  Bible  itself;  the  Bible  being  witness. 

6.  Separate  ages.  Not  less  emphasized  than  the  con- 
crete verity  of  the  events  themselves  is  the  division  of 
the  history  into  distinct  periods,  each  usually  parted 
from  others  by  a  conspicuous  epoch,  and  having  a  cer- 
tain unity  and  significance  of  its  own.  Many  minor 
divisions  of  this  character  are  traceable,  as  in  the 
book  of  Genesis,  w^here  the  recurrence  of  the  formula, 
"  These  are  the  generations,"  etc.,  seems  to  indicate  the 
beginning  of  a  new  era.  But  it  will  be  sufficient  for 
our  purpose  to  distinguish  a  few  more  prominent 
ones  after  the  apostasy.  These  are  :  the  Antediluvian 
period ;  the  National  period  of  Israel,  from  Abraham 
to  the  Kings ;  the  Royal  period,  thence  to  the  Captiv- 
ity ;  the  Teaching  period,  thence  to  the  Crucifixion ; 
and  the  Pentecostal  period,  after  the  Resurrection.  In 
the  first  of  these  nature  reigned  ;  the  nations  were  all 
*'  suffered  to  walk  in  their  own  ways."  Wliereupon, 
overmastered  by  their  conditions,  they  returned  to  the 
brutality  of  the  primal  "  dragons  in  their  slime,"  filling 
the  earth  with  sanguinary  "  violence,"  until,  like  a  dis- 


262       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

masted  and  scuttled  ship,  the  whole  race  settled  out 
of  sight  in  the  seething  waters.  Thence  began  a  new 
age,  in  which  a  ''chosen  people"  were  drawn  out  of 
the  undistinguished  multitude  and  "  tried  "  under  care- 
fully devised  conditions.  The  experiment  was  a  pro- 
tracted and  painstaking  one,  but  resulted  at  last  in 
national  decay  and  disheartenment.  Anarchy  reigned ; 
for  "  every  man  did  that  which  was  right  in  his  own 
eyes,"  and  the  "  highways  were  deserted  "  because  of 
freebooters.  They  lost  even  the  tool-making  art,  sink- 
ing back  into  barbarian  helplessness,  in  which,  with- 
out "  sword  or  spear  among  forty  thousand,"  they  were 
the  easy  prey  of  neighboring  tribes. 

Thereupon  they  were  at  their  request  remitted  to 
their  own  wisdom,  which  they  exercised  in  the  sub- 
stitution of  a  new  regime  for  the  Mosaic,  making 
themselves  "  a  king,  like  all  the  nations."  Under  this 
self-appointed  experiment  they  grew  rapidly  to  splen- 
dor under  David  and  Solomon ;  but  it  was  the  splen- 
dor of  the  setting,  not  of  the  rising  sun ;  whose  light  is 
crimson,  too,  with  the  vapors  of  decay.  The  "  little 
finger  "  of  oppression  in  the  father  grew  to  be  "  thick- 
er "  than  his  "  father's  loins  "  in  the  son ;  the  leather 
thong  became  a  scourge  "  of  scorpions ; "  and  the 
bruised  and  despairing  remnants  of  the  nation  were 
dragged  away  into  Babylon. 

So  ends  the  triple  experiment  which  makes  up  the 
old  regime  and  fills  the  outline  of  the  Old  Testament. 
Under  the  untrammelled  tutelage  of  nature,  under  the 
sagaciously  prescribed  regulations  of  the  Mosaic  code, 
under  the  experimentally  reached  resort  to  regal  rule, 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT   IN   SCRIPTURE.        263 

the  problem  has  been  fairly  exhausted,  as  to  whether 
a  race  or  nation  can  be  crowded  to  its  true  goal 
by  the  pressure  of  environment.  It  ends  in  heart- 
break, exile,  and  the  wail  of  the  last  prophet ;  which, 
turning  toward  the  future,  becomes  a  foreboding  lest 
God  "  come  and  smite  the  earth  with  a  curse."  But 
through  this  foreboding  sounds  the  tone  of  promise 
also ;  for  Elijah  the  prophet  shall  return  to  prepare 
the  way  for  the  new  kingdom  of  the  heart.  Not  the 
old  giants  from  before  the  flood,  to  hammer  out  mas- 
sive weapons  on  cyclopean  forges,  nor  Samson  nor 
Shamgar  to  swing  them  in  grotesque  slaughter ;  not 
Moses,  although,  standing  on  majestic  Sinai,  bearing 
the  adamantine  tablets  whose  graven  statutes  can 
never  be  effaced,  he  be  massive  in  character  as  the 
one  and  enduring  in  history  as  the  other,  —  he  shall 
indeed  return  at  the  Transfiguration,  not  to  revive 
the  old,  but  to  bear  witness  that  its  hour  is  past, 
and  to  invoke  acceptance  of  the  new,  for  "the  law 
made  nothing  perfect ; "  not  Solomon,  although  "  he 
made  silver  and  gold  at  Jerusalem  as  plenteous  as 
stones,"  and  Jerusalem  herself  the  crown  jewel  of  the 
earth,  —  he  "slept  with  his  fathers"  and  does  not 
awaken  again,  —  not  these,  but  Elijah  the  prophet, 
will  link  the  Old  time  to  the  New.  In  this  transfer 
of  ascendency  from  the  warrior,  the  lawgiver,  and  the 
king,  to  the  prophet,  and  the  predicted  survival  of  the 
prophetic  element  alone  from  among  the  formative 
forces  of  that  early  time,  we  find  clear  testimony  to 
the  failure  of  the  experiment  of  human  perfecting  by 
external  means.      The  sword,  the  stone   tablet,  and 


264       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

the  sceptre  give  place  to  the  word.  The  true  ruler 
is  henceforth  the  "seer;"  he  only  can  foretell  the 
future  who  can  inwardly  read  the  present  and  the 
past.  Malachi,  accordingly,  turning  the  exploring 
lens  backward  along  the  path,  sends  its  gleam  also 
forward  across  the  gulf,  and  beholds  the  coming  en- 
thronement of  the  WOED. 

We  pass  on,  then,  to  the  new  centuries.  The  inter- 
vening space  is  filled  with  turbulence  and  transition. 
The  massive  despotisms  of  Asia  have  been  wrecked  and 
ground  up  as  in  a  flood,  and  the  disintegrated  elements 
of  the  ancient  civilizations  have  been  drifting  west- 
ward to  nucleate  in  a  new  continent  in  new  forms. 
Among  the  Jews  the  teaching  synagogue  has  been 
growing  beside  and  threatening  the  supremacy  of  the 
temple  formalism ;  the  Jewish  rabbi  has  breathed  the 
effervescent  atmosphere  of  Greek  speculation,  and  is 
full  of  casuistry  and  debate ;  the  rigid  Hebrew  lan- 
guage itself  is  giving  way  to  the  more  fluent  Greek, 
only  tingeing  it  with  the  Hebraistic  temper  here  and 
there;  and  the  Sacred  Oracles  themselves  have  in 
the  Septuagint  version  been  boldly  recast  in  forms  of 
speech  hitherto  accounted  profane.  Meantime  there 
is  much  questioning,  but  little  satisfactory  answering. 
The  divers  philosophic  schools  are  in  vain  probing  the 
muddy  depths  for  a  foundation  stone.  The  Eoman, 
weary  of  sophistry,  but  unable  to  return  to  animalism, 
asks  restlessly,  "  What  is  truth  ? "  Judaism  likewise 
is  broken  into  sects,  alike  dogmatic,  alike  dissatisfied. 

Into  such  a  receptive  and  expectant  world  the 
Messianic  Teacher  comes.     Under  so  favorable  con- 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT   IN    SCRIPTURE.  265 

ditions  he  proposes  to  try  the  new  experiment  of 
human  renovation:  no  longer  now  by  physical  agencies 
reaching  the  corporate  race  or  nation,  but  by  intel- 
lectual forces  remoulding  the  individual  man.  Forth- 
with we  pass  from  history  to  biography,  from  the 
palace  to  the  cottage,  from  questions  of  social  and 
civil  organization  to  those  of  personal  experience.  We 
are  not  busy  with  power,  which  cramps  and  mars,  but 
with  truth,  which  sets  free.  With  the  Great  Teacher 
we  return  to  the  past  and  to  nature,  walking  as  in  an 
Interpreter's  House.  He  finds  a  fountain  of  love  in 
the  desert  rock  of  the  Law  ;  he  disenchants  the  dumb 
lily  that  it  may  utter  its  secret,  of  outward  beauty 
through  inward  purity  ;  he  opens  long  vistas,  through 
parable  and  miracle  and  well-matched  incident, 
through  which  the  open-eyed  may  look  into  the  core 
of  things.  Cautiously,  patiently,  lovingly  he  leads  on 
those  who  consent  to  be  learners,  telling  them  many 
things  as  they  are  "  able  to  bear." 

But  with  what  avail  ?  A  few  are  led  by  curiosity,  a 
few  by  love  of"  loaves  and  fishes,^'  a  few  by  gratitude, 
to  follow  him  intermittently.  Those  whom  by  special 
appeal  he  attaches  to  himself  are  unsympathetic, 
dull,  and  untrustworthy  to  the  last.  "  It  is  need- 
ful for  you,"  he  said,  "  that  I  go  away,"  —  even  "  for 
yoio." 

So  fails  the  last  experiment  of  the  four.  It  is  no- 
ticeable how  clearly  the  failure  has  been  anticipated 
and  announced.  Not  by  ethical  precept,  by  parable 
or  miracle,  had  he,  from  the  beginning,  hoped  to  mas- 
ter and  change  the  world,  but  by  being  "  lifted  up." 


-*a 


266       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

He  saw  but  one  cure  for  the  heart  of  mankind, — 
"  Ye  must  be  born  again." 

c.  Genetic  progress.  And  this  suggests  to  us  the 
third  predominant  idea  of  the  Scripture  record,  namely, 
the  genetic  relation  of  the  successive  periods. 

They  have  not  followed  each  other  at  hap-hazard, 
but  in  regular  gradation.  The  line  of  continuity, 
though  often  attenuated,  has  never  been  broken  :  and 
no  epoch  has  been  fruitless  or  void ;  for  each  has 
transmitted  the  unresolved  problem  to  the  next  with 
some  new  elements  toward  its  solution.  As  the  earth 
born  out  of  the  waters,  and  life  born  out  of  the  earth, 
brought  forward  each  some  elements  of  that  realm 
from  which  it  sprung,  so  Noah  brought  through  the 
flood  the  arts  and  language  of  the  perished  world. 
Moses  took  through  the  Eed  Sea  the  training  of 
Egypt.  And  the  prophetic  torch  was  passed  on  from 
the  seers  of  the  old  covenant  to  those  of  the  new. 
But  as  earth  is  more  than  water,  and  life  than  earth, 
so  every  new-born  age  has  its  elements  of  difference 
as  well  as  those  of  identity.  The  risen  body  will  by 
some  unbroken  thread  prolong  the  identity  of  the 
present,  for  it  is  like  the  sheaf  from  the  planted  grain  ; 
but  "  the  glory  of  the  celestial  is  one,  and  the  glory  of 
the  terrestrial  is  another."  There  is  enough  of  iden- 
tity to  enable  us  to  prophesy,  enough  of  diversity  to 
confound  us,  if  we  try  to  do  more  than  "  prophesy  in 
part.'' 

The  natural  counterpart  of  this  historic  unfolding 
is  the  conception  of  a  preordained  plan,  the  outline 
of  which  becomes  distinct  through  the  events  that 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT   IN   SCRIPTURE.  267 

fulfil  it,  —  a  "  mystery  "  before,  but  in  the  growing 
years  made  plain. 

2.  Tlieory.  —  As  to  the  meaning  of  all  this  we  are 
not  left  in  doubt.  The  Scripture  itself  plainly  dis- 
closes a  theory  the  truth  of  wdiich  w^e  may  readily 
test.     It  assumes  — 

a.  That  precision  of  detail,  including  names  and 
dates,  will  some  day  furnish  cleivs  for  comparison  with 
independent  testimony,  and  so  for  verification  of  the 
date  and  gemtineness  of  Scripture  itself 

b.  TJuxt  the  reasoiied  experience  of  mankind  will 
some  day  disclose  the  deep  anticipatory  significance  of 
the  early  experiences  of  the  race,  which  were  "  ivritten 
aforetime  for  our  learning  T 

c.  That  history  itself  is  germinant  of  prophecy,  being 
tJie  unfolding  of  an  orderly  series  of  events  after  a  com- 
plete and  unchanging  plan,  ordained  "before  the  foun- 
dation of  the  world" 

3.  Verification.  —  Let  us  consider  these  suggestions 
in  their  order. 

a.  Historic  vindication.  Near  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  the  reaction  from  the  mystic 
and  scholastic  methods  of  interpretation  concentrated 
study  more  exclusively  upon  the  text  and  narrative  of 
Scripture.  Beside  this  tendency  in  the  theological, 
grew  up  in  the  region  of  classical  study  the  school  of 
destructive  criticism,  which  sought  to  cut  away  the 
earlier  portions  of  Roman  and  Greek  history  as  mythi- 
cal. The  brilliancy  of  the  method  as  proposed  by 
Pouilly,  the  scope  it  afforded  for  the  display  of  critical 
ingenuity,  and  the  striking  results  it  achieved  in  the 


268  CHRIST   AND   MODEPwIi   THOUGHT. 

hands  of  Mebuhr,  could  not  but  commend  it  to  the 
adventurous  and  aspiring  historical  interpreter.  ISTor 
was  so  formidable  a  weapon  likely  to  be  overlooked 
in  that  arena  where,  as  Farrar  phrases  it,  the  "  human 
intellect "  was  making  its  "  long  struggle  against  the 
authority  of  the  Scriptures."  Accordingly,  a  phalanx 
of  writers  began  along  these  lines,  more  or  less  di- 
rectly, an  increasiug  assault  upon  the  genuineness, 
the  integrity,  and  the  veracity  of  the  Bible  history. 
Of  the  details  of  this  warfare  there  is  neither  leisure 
nor  necessity  here  to  speak.  Its  results  could  in  no 
case  have  been  other  than  meagre,  precarious,  and 
unsatisfying;  for  they  are  almost  wholly  negative. 
"Niebuhr  opened  more  questions,"  says  Sir  G.  C. 
Lewis,  "  than  he  closed ;  and  the  critics  have  been  at 
war  ever  since,  because  all  alike  are,  in  judging  by 
internal  evidence  only,  trusting  to  an  occult  faculty 
of  divination  rather  than  ordinary  tests  applied  to 
modern  history."  So  that  each  new  history  written 
from  such  a  standpoint  becomes  "  one  guess  among 
many."  The  great  stress  of  adverse  criticism  on  the 
Pentateuch  is  to  show,  for  instance,  that  it  is  not  the 
single  work  of  Moses ;  but  how  much  of  it  he  wrote, 
and  who  wrote  or  compiled  the  rest,  whether  Samuel, 
Hilkiah,  Jeremiah,  Ezra,  or  some  other,  and  when 
and  where,  and  from  what  data,  —  to  these  questions 
the  answers  are  almost  as  numerous  and  whimsical 
as  the  writers. 

So  far  as  reconstruction  is  attempted,  it  is  on  a 
purely  theoretic  basis.  It  is  a  rewriting  of  history 
(to  accept  the  statement  of  Beaufort,  who,  although 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT  IN   SCRIPTURE.  269 

later  than  Pouilly,  is  commonly  regarded  as  the 
founder  of  the  metliod)  "  according  to  what  it  ought 
to  have  been,  in  order  that  things  should  have  become 
what  they  afterwards  were."  That  is  to  say,  the  tes- 
timony is  to  be  weighed  by  the  theory,  after  the 
scholastic  method. 

According  to  this  canon,  —  requiring  that  whatever 
reveals  insight  or  foresight  extraordinary  at  a  partic- 
ular date,  must,  regardless  of  testimony,  be  assumed 
to  have  been  written  at  a  later  date,  when  it  would, 
in  the  progress  of  things,  have  become  ordinary,  —  it 
is  hard  to  see  how  the  Scriptures  can  have  been 
written  earlier  tlian  the  present  century ;  and,  in  fact, 
as  they  keep  steadily  in  advance  of  us,  the  next 
generation  will  probably  be  able  to  show  that  in  our 
time  they  had  not  been  written  at  all.  Certainly  the 
matchless  architecture  of  the  Great  Pyramid  as  de- 
scribed by  Ferguson  "  ought  not  to  have  been  "  in  the 
age  and  land  of  protoplasmic  mud ;  and  by  the  same 
rule  Professor  Norton  is  abundantly  justified  in  con- 
cluding tliat  "  it  would  be  idle  to  argue  against  the 
supposition  that  alphabetical  writing  was  known  in 
•the  time  of  Abraham."  Under  its  sanction  Volney 
felt  secure  in  ridiculing  the  faith  of  those  who 
thought  Babel  and  Nimrod  and  Abraham  to  have 
been  realities  rather  than  astrologic  myths ;  and 
Kuenen  still  insists  that  nations  must,  from  the  be- 
ginning, have  grown  "by  subjugation  and  assimila- 
tion," and  not  from  a  "genealogic  root,"  as  stated 
in  the  Pentateuch.  The  Dutch  admiral  refused  to 
believe  his  sailors'  testimony  that  the  sun  was  literally 


270       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

above  the  horizon,  because  he  had  mathematically  put 
it  below.  But  tlie  sun  remained ;  and  so  do  the 
pyramids,  and  the  writings  of  the  Abrahamic  era, 
and  tlie  historic  Abraham  himself,  and  Nimrod,  and 
Babel,  and  the  concurrent  proofs  of  patriarchy  as  the 
germ  of  political  organization,  to  be  "  verified  any  time 
you  like  to  try." 

It  surely  must  seem  a  striking  coincidence  to  any 
fair-minded  man,  that  just  when  tliis  tide  of  adverse 
criticism  had  "  come  in  like  a  flood,"  so  loosening  the 
foundations  of  historic  faith  that,  as  Keil  complains, 
it  had  left  "no  objective  ground  or  standpoint  free 
from  uncertainty,"  there  has  come  a  responsive  out- 
burst of  direct  testimony,  such  as  has  never,  in  so 
short  a  space  of  time,  been  given  to  the  world  before. 

When  the  hypothetic  reconstruction  of  the  sacred 
narrative  began,  it  had  a  free  field ;  for  all  early  his- 
tory then  hung  loose  and  nebulous  against  the  sky. 
Cloudland  is  facile  to  fancy,  but  troublesome  to  slow- 
footed  faith.  There  were,  indeed,  strange  written 
characters  on  Egyptian  obelisks  and  in  tombs ;  there 
were  writings  disclosed  in  the  grasp  of  unearthed 
mummies,  but  the  "  book "  was  "  sealed,"  we  could 
not  read  it ;  there  was  a  tangle  of  vision  in  the  field 
of  language,  mythology,  political  and  social  growth, 
etc.,  but  it  had  not  been  focused  through  comparative 
study,  so  as  to  reveal  its  secret ;  there  were  rich  mon- 
uments lying  beside  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  but 
these  were  buried,  not  only  under  unattractive  earth- 
mounds,  but  under  two  thousand  years  of  human 
forgetfulness.     For  Xenophon,  camping  with  his  ten 


THE   HISTOraC   ELEMENT   IN   SCRIPTURE.  271 

thousand  Greeks  beside  the  ancient  site,  had  forgotten 
the  very  name  of  Xineveh. 

But  now  we  are  reminded  how  the  Bible  speaks  of 
stone  tablets  "  laid  up  for  a  testimony  ; "  of  a  "  book 
sealed  up  unto  the  time  of  the  end  ; "  of  "  risen  wit- 
nesses/' forthcoming  in  time  of  need.  The  century  of 
literary  scepticism  has  come  almost  to  its  close,  its  cau- 
tious insinuations  have  grown  to  a  triumphant  taunt, 
and  there  is  no  direct  answer.  In  1798  Napoleon  is 
in  Egypt  on  far  other  than  theological  business ;  his 
French  soldiers  (who  are  so  benighted,  religiously,  that 
on  the  Mediterranean  they  have  asked  each  other, 
wonderingly,  why  Palestine  is  called  the  "  Holy 
Land ")  are  at  work  in  their  military  excavations ; 
they  turn  up  a  dull  basaltic  stone,  with  a  curious 
triple  inscription ;  they  do  not  know  it,  but  in  that 
Rosetta  stone  they  have  found  the  key  by  which  the 
riddle  of  the  Egyptian  Sphinx  shall  be  unlocked,  and 
the  statements  of  Scripture  be  confirmed.  That  pick- 
axe blow  has  broken  open  the  sealed  chambers  of 
testimony,  and  we  may  read  inscribed  in  the  lasting 
rock,  unobliterated  and  unmarred,  the  very  words  of 
contemporaneous  witnesses  concerning  the  times  of 
Joseph  and  of  Moses.  The  very  dead  seem  to  awake, 
under  this  talismanic  touch,  to  unclasp  the  long  mean- 
ingless papyrus  rolls  from  their  wasted  hands,  re- 
leased from  the  custody  of  their  long-guarded  secret. 
So  convergent  and  conclusive  are  these  direct  testi- 
monies in  answer  to  the  theoretic  cavils  of  the  time, 
that  Mr.  Stuart  Poole  is  able  to  cite  the  disinterested 
authority  of  the  great  Egyptologists,  Lepsius,  Brugsch, 


/*i 


272      CHKIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

and  Cbabas,  to  the  effect  that  the  Pentateuch  and  the 
monuments  are  mutually  confirmatory ;  and  to  affirm 
that  the  theory  of  a  later  date  than  the  time  of  Moses, 
or  of  another  locality  than  the  banks  of  the  Nile, 
for  the  production  of  the  Pentateuch,  is  no  longer 
tenable. 

After  the  Rosetta  stone  and  its  revelations  came 
the  Behistun  inscription,  protected  hitherto  from  care- 
ful notice  and  from  defacement,  not  by  burial  but  by 
yL  its  being  lifted  four  hundred  feet  up  the  face  of  the 
rock.  Almost  simultaneously  with  its  recovery,  came 
the  disentombment  of  the  Ninevite  and  Babylonian 
world,  to  which  it  was  to  be  the  interpreter.  In  Gene- 
sis we  read  that  the  builders  of  Babel  "  had  brick  for 
stone,  and  slime  had  they  for  mortar."  This  statement, 
most  natural  if  written  in  .the  midst  of  the  massive 
stone-work  beside  the  rainless  Nile,  reminds  us  at 
once,  by  contrast,  of  the  perishableness  of  the  am- 
bitious tower,  built  of  clay  in  a  land  of  moist  climate 
and  water  flood.  Singularly,  the  very  frailty  of  these 
structures  has  been  the  shield  of  their  contents.  The 
soft  walls,  melting  inward,  have  formed  a  crust  over  the 
treasures  within ;  beneath  which,  secure  from  sun  and 
rain,  the  records  written  in  crumbling  clay  have  come 
down  unharmed  to  us.  By  the  light  of  these  long- 
extinguished  earthen  lamps,  rekindled  from  the  flash 
of  the  Behistun  inscription,  we  wander,  as  if  by  en- 
chantment, in  the  corridors,  and  look  along^  the  vistas 
of  an  antiquity  reaching  nearly  to  the  flood.  For, 
not  only  do  we  here  find  the  unquestionably  synchro- 
nous record  of  the  daily  life  of  more  than  2,500  years 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT   IN   SCRIPTUKE.  273 

ago,  but  also  iu  the  royal  libraries  the  memorials  of  a 
still  more  distant  civilization,  —  so  distant  that  al- 
ready they  had  become  fossilized  in  an  extinct  lan- 
guage. Babel  and  Erech  and  Accad  and  Calneh  are 
no  longer  mythical  cities,  for  their  remains  are  visible ; 
and  scholars  find  no  fitter  name  than  that  of  "  Accad  " 
for  the  primeval  language  just  mentioned.  Nimrod 
is  no  astronomic  demigod,  but  a  historic  mortal  whose 
exploits  are  matter  of  record.  In  the  very  land  where 
Genesis  locates  the  Babel  Tower  and  the  "  confusion 
of  tongues,"  we  find,  in  the  library  of  Assurbanipal,  a 
corresponding  account,  and  the  renniant  of  a  tower 
which  carries  in  its  self-recorded  name,  Borsippa,  a 
reminiscence  of  such  an  event.  Moreover,  we  are 
compelled,  in  the  language  of  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson, 
"  by  the  mere  intersection  of  linguistic  paths,  and  inde- 
pendently of  all  reference  to  the  Scripture  record  .  .  . 
to  fix  on  the  plains  of  Shinar  as  the  focus  from  which 
the  various  lines  had  radiated." 

It  is  needless  to  refer  in  detail  to  the  daily  increas- 
ing mass  of  translated  Assyrian  and  Chaldean  docu- 
ments, in  which  the  long  list  of  names,  once  peculiar 
to  the  Scripture,  recur  as  familiarly  as  household 
words ;  or  to  the  Moabite  stone,  recovered  in  so  ro-  7^ 
mantic  a  way,  which  tells  so  freely  the  story  of 
"  Mesha,  king  of  j\Toab,"  and  interprets  together  the 
Hebrew  and  Phoenician,  as  the  Rosetta  stone  had  done 
the  Greek  and  the  Egyptian,  and  the  Behistun  in- 
scription the  Persian,  Assyrian,  and  Babylonian;  or 
to  tlie  testimony  from  the  comparative  study  of  lan- 
guage, ethnology,  ethnography,  etc.,  rapidly  grouping 

18 


274       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

in  confirmation  of  the  Scriptural  account  of  the  origin 
and  growth  of  early  civilization. 

The  stress  of  my  argument  is  not  upon  the  variety 
or  completeness  of  the  testimony  as  to  matters  of  fact, 
but  upon  (1)  the  preservation  of  these  unique  and 
perishable  memorials  from  so  great  antiquity  and  in 
so  improbable  ways,  while  the  nearer,  more  abundant, 
and  multiplied  copies  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics 
have  almost  wholly  perished ;  (2)  their  hiding  through 
so  many  centuries,  entombed  in  rubbish,  or  sealed  up 
in  occult  languages,  making  their  authority,  when  re- 
vealed, indisputable;  (3)  their  almost  simultaneous 
issuance,  and  the  strangely  coincident  appearance  of 
the  several  undreamed-of  keys  for  tlieir  interpreta- 
tion ;  (4)  the  exact  response  of  the  testimony  so 
evoked  to  the  very  question  in  hand,  namely,  the  an- 
tiquity and  genuineness  of  the  Scripture  documents  ; 
(5)  the  abundance  of  points  of  contact,  and  conse- 
quently of  test,  between  the  new  data  and  the  Scrip- 
ture, because  of  the  circumstantiality  of  each ;  (6)  the 
prescient  minuteness  of  the  Scripture  in  name,  date, 
and  circumstance  avowedly  for  this  very  end.  Surely 
"  this  also  Cometh  forth  from  the  Lord  of  hosts,  which 
is  wonderful  in  counsel  and  excellent  in  working." 

h.  Anticipated  Imowledge.  We  are  assured  in  the 
Scripture  that  the  things  therein  "  written  aforetime 
were  written  for  our  learning;"  and  especially  as  to 
the  experiences  of  the  people  of  Israel,  that  "these 
happened  unto  them  for  ensaraples,  and  they  are  writ- 
ten for  our  admonition,  upon  whom  the  ends  of  the 
world  are  come."     Eousseau  and  his  comrades  advo- 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT   IN   SCRIPTURE.        275 

cated  a  return  to  the  ahatidon  of  "  nature."  Had  they 
heeded  the  warning  lesson  of  the  early  world,  France 
need  not  have  "  become  flesh,"  and  sunk  in  a  bloody 
deluge.  Hero- worshippers  ever  and  anon  exalt  the 
virtues  of  a  "  strong  government,"  but  the  lessons  of 
Csesarism  had  been  freely  taught  before  Caesar ;  and 
in  the  advent  of  Saul  in  Israel,  we  see  the  history  of 
Napoleon  written  before  the  time ;  for  he,  too,  solved 
by  despotism  the  problem  of  anarchy  arising  out  of 
the  ill  adjustment  of  highly  developed  institutions  to 
an  unfit  people.  Equally  has  the  modern  proposition 
of  salv^ation  by  " culture"  been  anticipated,  as  we- have 
seen,  in  the  matchless  work  of  the  Great  Teacher  in 
the  propitious  Greek  era.  But  then,  as  always,  the 
school,  like  "  the  law,"  "  made  nothing  perfect." 

It  is  especially  noticeable,  in  the  light  of  theories 
widely  prevalent  in  our  day,  how  precisely  the  em- 
phasis is  laid,  in  the  typical  history  of  the  "  chosen 
people,"  on  those  very  formative  conditions  which,  as 
we  are  now  assured,  have  in  them  the  "  promise  and 
potency"  of  a  perfect  humanity.  The^rs^  of  these 
conditions  is  fitness  of  race.  The  progenitor  must  be 
well  selected  and  the  stock  kept  pure.  That  is  to 
say,  we  must  begin,  in  science  and  in  Scripture 
alike,  with  Genesis.  Does  it  not  meet  the  requirement, 
if  a  conspicuously  wortliy  Abram  be  chosen,  signalized 
henceforth  as  "  the  father,"  who  will  at  the  begin- 
ning protest  against  mongrel  blood  in  Isaac's  be- 
trothal ;  who  will  so  instil  that  sentiment  into  his 
progeny  that  it  will  henceforth  reveal  itself  in  scrupu- 
lous exactness  of  genealogic  record,  in  the  surrender 


276      CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

of  the  fondest  relations  when  in  conflict  with  it,  as  in 
Ezra's  reformation,  and  will  survive  as  a  passion  in  his 
posterity  4,000  years  after  him  ? 

A  second  element  is  fitness  of  environment.  The 
nation  born  into  an  unpropitious  region  lights  an  un- 
equal battle.  It  cannot  reach  its  destiny,  except  by  the 
help  of  landscape,  soil,  and  climate.  Hence  the  prom- 
inence of  migration  among  the  agencies  in  human 
progress,  —  that  is,  of  Exodus.  Israel,  walloMdng  in 
the  luxuriance  of  the  Nile  valley,  enervated  by  the 
caressing  climate,  dwarfed  under  the  shadow  of  a 
landscape  whose  very  mountains  are  tombs,  can  never 
become  great.  The  decaying  nation  must  first  be  got 
out  of  Egypt  "  by  a  strong  hand ; "  then  Egypt  must 
be  got  out  of  them,  by  the  sharp  regimen  of  diet,  exer- 
cise, and  chastisement  in  the  "  desert  of  wandering ; " 
then  strong-tempered  Canaan  must  stinmlate,  enlarge, 
and  develop  them  into  national  manhood.  Even  to 
this  day  that  insignificant  strip  of  land  between  the 
river  and  the  sea,  —  in  the  very  centre  of  the  triple 
continent,  yet  thoroughly  secluded,  —  small  in  extent, 
but  a  very  microcosm  in  diversity  of  landscape  and 
product  (having  to-day,  though  itself  not  larger  than 
the  six  northern  counties  of  England,  a  flora  twice 
as  extensive  as  all  Great  Britain),  —  that  land,  I  say, 
remains  unique  in  the  world  as  an  ideal  training-field 
of  men. 

A  third  prerequisite  to  national  development  is 
fitness  of  institutions.  These,  if  they  are  to  minister 
to  growth,  must  recomize  an  unreached  and  inflexible 
ideal ;  but  if  they  are  not  to  dishearten,  and  so  be- 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT  IN   SCRIPTURE.  277 

come  fruitless,  they  must  also  recognize  the  "  hardness  " 
of  men's  "  hearts,"  and  so  take  on  a  temporary  and 
practicable  form.  Precisely  these  "rudiments"  of 
national  legislative  training  are  embodied  in  the  next 
book  of  the  Pentateuch,  Leviticus,  —  the  "primer"  of 
Israel,  —  local  and  ephemeral  in  form,  yet  in  spirit  so 
perennially  suggestive  that  it  attracts  and  instructs 
alike  the  Puritan  pioneer,  the  sanitary  legislator,  and 
the  social  reformer. 

A  fourth  essential  idea  is  fitiiess  of  political  organi- 
zation. This  changes  a  nation  into  a  people,  fuses  the 
elements  into  a  corporate  unity,  and  makes  an  organic 
life  possible.  How  deftly  this  problem  is  wrought 
out  in  the  book  of  Numbers,  I  need  scarcely  say. 
Military  enthusiasm,  family  pride,  religious  devotion, 
all  are  there  wrought  in  as  buttresses  of  a  structure 
which  is  itself  single  and  complete. 

Fifth  and  last  in  order  is  the  element  of  progressive 
adaptation  of  institutions.  Fifth,  also,  in  order,  clos- 
ing the  "  five  fifths  "  of  the  Pentateuch,  is  Deuteron- 
omy, —  the  "  second  law."  It  is  not  a  new  statute, 
buf  a  new  phase  of  the  old,  —  a  revision  adjusting  it 
to  a  new  life  in  a  new  land.  It  suggests  by  its  very 
method  and  tone  the  subordination  and  plastic  func- 
tion of  all  forms,  and  recognizes  some  advance  on  the 
part  of  the  people  toward  that  conception.  It  hints 
of  Christ's  "  new  bottles  "  for  "  new  wine,"  and  Paul's 
"  newness  of  the  spirit "  mastering  the  "  oldness  of  the 
letter." 

But  enough  :  the  Pentateuch  was  clearly  written  be- 
fore our  new  day,  in  which  world-wide  research  and 


278       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

wiser  methods  of  study  have  made  luminous  the  path- 
ways of  the  race  ;  before  the  human  mind  had  aroused 
even  to  curiosity  as  to  the  nature  and  origin  of  things ; 
yet  in  it  are  distinctly  discriminated  and  emphasized 
those  very  exterior  conditions  of  human  development 
to  which,  under  the  name  of  "  the  environment,"  mod- 
ern philosophy  attributes  the  moulding  of  all  history. 
But  it  as  carefully  records  the  experimental  proof 
that  the  environment  is  not  omnipotent,  as  Mr.  Buckle 
seems*  to  teach;  that  it  does  not  create  nor  compel 
progress,  but  only  supplies  conditions  therefor.  It 
thus  not  only  confirms,  by  anticipation,  the  truths, 
but  also  fore-reads  and  rebukes  the  errors,  of  to-day. 

So,  then,  it  appears  that  in  "  the  childhood  of  the 
world,"  when  anatomic  science  was  as  yet  unthought 
of,  some  eye  was  keen  enough,  and  some  hand  skilful 
enough,  to  lay  open,  without  a  single  false  stroke,  the 
whole  bony  structure  which  underlies  and  gives  shape 
to  human  history ;  and  that,  while  the  idea  of  history 
was  itself  yet  foreign  to  the  race,  some  sagacious  in- 
fluence prompted  the  recording  of  that  demonstration, 
as  likely  to  have  significance  to  those  far-off  genera- 
tions "  upon  wdiom  the  ends  of  the  world  are  come." 
If,  according  to  the  canon  of  historic  criticism,  the 
record  of  that  which,  at  the  particular  date,  normally 
"  ought  not  to  have  been,"  involves  a  demand  of  faith 
in  the  supernatural,  then  clearly,  upon  proof  of  the 
antiquity  of  the  Pentateuch,  its  self-evidencing  pene- 
tration below  and  beyond  the  line  of  current  human  ex- 
perience, as  well  as  its  unique  and  marvellous  accuracy 
of  prevision,  marks  it  as  supernaturally  wrought  out. 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT   IN   SCRIPTURE.  279 

c.  The  genetic  Key.  —  The  complex  mysteries  of 
life  find  their  centre,  as  the  etymology  of  the  word 
nature  itself  may  liint,  in  birth  ;  and  birth  is  itself  a 
mystery.  That  there  is  a  certain  continuity  and  uni- 
formity in  hereditary  laws  is  clear.  Had  there  been 
nothing  more,  there  could  have  been  no  progress,  but 
monotonous  persistence  only.  But  there  is  something 
more.  Beside  the  constant,  there  is  also  an  eccentric 
and  incalculable  element.  In  thick  darkness,  behind 
the  sacred  veil,  the  fluent  life-elements  are  moulded 
into  specific  form,  and  quickened  with  a  specific  im- 
pulse under  brooding  wings.  Thus  comes  every  babe 
into  life,  —  as  Sir  Arthur  Helps  well  says, "  a  new  crea- 
ture, such  as  the  world  never  saw  before."  The  life,  un- 
folding its  variant  tendencies  under  law  we  may  study, 
but  those  tendencies  themselves  had  already  been  de- 
termined in  the  germ,  and  the  causes  that  produced 
them  are,  as  Mr.  Darwin  confesses,  "  very  obscure." 

Nevertheless,  into  this  "  obscurity  "  all  our  lines  of 
exploration  run  back  ;  all  problems  cluster  round  and 
resolve  themselves  into  that  of  "  origin."  The  mys- 
tery of  the  plant,  which  lies  open  in  the  flower,  was 
perfect  already  in  the  seed.  In  Nature  and  Scripture 
alike,  Revelation  lies  hid  in  Genesis. 

Genesis,  accordingly,  is  not  only  the  initial,  but  the 
continuous  and  central  idea  of  the  Sacred  Eecord. 
The  minuteness  of  detail  witli  which  an  incidental 
and  seemingly  trivial  occurrence  is  related  in  the 
30th  chapter  of  Genesis  may  here  be  in  many  ways 
suggestive.  It  may  interest  us  but  little  to  kuov/ 
that  Jacob  outwitted  the  crafty  Laban,  but  we  cannot 


280       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

fail  to  be  struck  with  the  novelty  and  shrewdness  of 
his  method.  For  we  perceive  that  he  recognized  the 
law  of  "  persistence  of  type,"  of  "  variation  through 
the  obscure  action  of  external  causes/'  of  "  persistence 
of  varieties,"  and  of  "selection  of  the  fittest/'  and 
turned  them  all  to  account.  May  not  the  recent 
treatise  on  the  "  Variation  of  Animals  under  Domes- 
tication "  have  been  the  unconscious  fruit  of  a  seed 
dropping  from  this  ancient  tree  into  a  receptive  soil  ? 

In  any  case,  the  early  pre-eminence  assigned  to 
birth,  as  the  hiding-place  of  power  and  the  gateway 
of  the  future,  is  manifest.  Through  that  gateway  hope 
looks  onward  in  the  first  promise,  for  "  the  seed  of  the 
woman  shall  bruise  the  serpent's  head/'  —  and  through 
it  in  response  to  that  hope  the  Incarnate  Son  comes 
into  the  world,  —  through  the  new  birth  men  enter 
the  spiritual  life  here,  —r  and  the  final  death-agony  is 
itself  the  birth-throe  through  which  they  enter  into 
life  beyond. 

For  this,  again,  is  an  element  in  the  mystery ;  that 
birth  holds  life  and  death  together  in  solution.  It  is 
not  only  a  channel  for  the  flow  of  continuous  lines 
of  force,  it  is  also  an  abyss  in  which  their  flow  is 
arrested  and  they  are  for  the  moment  lost.  Every 
child  is  a  Benoni  for  whose  sake  the  mother  drifts 
under  the  arches  of  death's  portals.  The  Mosaic 
economy  "  waxeth  old,  and  is  ready  to  vanish  away," 
that  the  Gospel  may  be  born.  Thus  all  historic 
epochs  have  the  features  of  a  birth.  Out  of  a  dis- 
solving race  a  new  life  emerges  in  Noah.  Out  of 
bleeding  Egypt,  through  a  Eed  Sea,  Israel  is  born 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT   IN   SCRIPTURE.  281 

into  a  national  existence.  Out  of  the  crumbling 
elements  of  the  "  kingdoms  of  this  world  "  comes  the 
new  "  kingdom  within."  We  recognize  the  pertinence 
of  the  figure  when  we  call  the  great  epoch  of  modern 
history  the  Renaissance. 

But  birth  implies  not  the  extinction,  but  only  the 
disintegration  of  the  old ;  whose  elements  persist  in 
the  new  life,  though  transformed.  •  The  "  new  man  " 
of  Christianity  is  neither  Greek  nor  Jew,  nor  an 
original  creation ;  but  "  out  of  twain  one  new  man  " 
is  born.  The  progressive  Greek  had  no  point  of 
departure ;  he  "  knew  not  God."  The  conservative 
Jew  had  a  right  point  of  departure,  but  he  would  not 
depart.  Paul,  by  birth  a  Jew,  by  culture  a  Greek, 
when  "born  from  above,"  was  such  a  "new  man;"  in 
whom  "strength  and  beauty"  were  blent  into  holi- 
ness. 

There  is  a  wide  margin  of  mystery,  but  no  caprice, 
in  the  ongoing  of  the  life  forces  through  birth. 
Local  winds  and  currents  are  immeasurable,  but  the 
tidal  wave  is  one.  The  "  westward  course  of  empire  " 
is  unmistakable.  In  the  shaping  of  that  course  we 
now  see  how  significant  were  the  east  and  west  ver- 
tebral lines  of  mountain  structure  ;  the  stepping-stones 
across  the  ^Egean '  to  tempt  the  less  adventurous 
Greeks  to  their  marvellous  land ;  the  hiding  of  the 
new  world  until  the  old  race — born  out  of  Asia  into 
Europe,  and  out  of  Europe,  mingling  the  Saxon  and 
Norman  "twain,"  into  near  Britain  —  should  have 
"  strength  to  bring  forth"  a  new  life  resolute  enough  to 
project  itself  across  the  greater  sea ;  and  the  meeting 


2&2  CHRIST  AND   MODERN  THOUGHT. 

here  of  a  transverse  mountain  chain  along  which,  as 
a  barricade,  the  hindered  flood  of  "  peoples,  nations, 
and  tongues,"  flowing  northward  and  southward, 
might  mingle  into  one.  That  these  river-banks  of 
terrestrial  configuration  had  a  predestining  force  upon 
the  progress  of  the  race,  we  see  ;  but  were  the  river- 
banks  themselves  so  wise  in  self  forming,  or  was  their 
form  itself  predestined  ?  After  the  study  of  Humboldt, 
Eitter,  and  Guyot,  does  it  seem  so  unreasonable  to 
declare  of  the  nations,  with  Paul,  that  God  "hath 
determined  the  times  before  appointed,  and  the  bounds 
of  their  habitation  "  ? 

If  the  structure  of  the  earth  reveal  thus  a  pre- 
determinant  drift;  if  the  world  of  life  show  a 
"  struggle  "  upward,  "  guided  wittingly,"  by  "  natural 
selection/'  the  "  whole  creation  groaning  and  travail- 
ing in  pain  together  until  now  "  toward  a  final  birth ; 
if  human  history  disclose  a  "  stream  of  tendency " 
which  uniformly  "  makes  for  righteousness,"  —  then  it 
is  no  longer  hard  to  pronounce  the  Bible  word,  speak- 
ing of  all  this  as  "  foreordained."  The  bluffs  may  be 
miles  apart,  between  which  the  untrammelled  river 
meanders  at  will,  but  they  are  there,  and  they  cannot 
be  overpassed.  The  sacrifice  of  Christ  was  a  thing 
"  before  determined  to  he  done,''  but  Herod  and  Pilate 
and  the  rest  freely  determined  hy  whom  it  should  be 
done. 

Under  the  scope  of  this  law,  even  the  subtile  free- 
dom of  the  birth  forces  is  restrained.  Even  now, 
approximately,  the  "  shadow  "  foretells  "  the  coming 
events."     By  the  light  of  our  imperfect  knowledge 


THE   HISTORIC   ELEMENT  IN   SCRIPTURE.  283 

we  can  "  prophesy  iu  part."  Could  we  see  deeper 
in,  we  could  see  farther  on.  For  'prophecy  is  but 
history  recorded. 

Fitly,  the  Bible  record  closes  with  the  prophetic 
Apocalypse,  —  the  record  of  "  things  which  m%ist 
shortly  come  to  pass,"  —  showing  how  the  future  lies 
open  in  the  past  and  present,  when  unsealed.  As  the 
flower  is  born  out  of  root  and  stalk,  completing  and 
explaining  it ;  as  it  gathers  into  its  hidden  looms  the 
gnarled  outlines,  the  stubborn  fibres,  the  dull  hues, 
weaves  them  anew  into  an  ethereal  beauty  of  texture, 
form,  and  color,  and  from  acid  juices  distils  into  the 
air  celestial  perfumes ;  so  the  Apocalypse  hangs  upon 
the  Scripture  history,  drawing  the  substance  thereof 
into  itself,  but  all  transfigured  and  illuminated  with 
the  "  glory  to  be  revealed." 

Dean  Trench  has  reminded  us,  in  his  discussion  of 
the  "  Epistles  to  the  Seven  Churches,"  how  the  order 
of  their  promised  rewards  hints  at  a  historic  sweep 
of  vision  from  Eden,  with  its  "  tree  of  life,"  to  the 
final  consummation,  and  a  seat  beside  the  Victor  "  on 
his  throne." 

The  vision  itself  begins  with  the  seven-sealed 
scroll,  already  "  written  within  and  without,"  but  as 
yet  unopened.  It  opens  inwardly,  for  the  inward  is 
the  onward,  of  vision.  As  seal  after  seal  is  broken, 
the  inner  secrets  of  history  are  unfolded  in  their 
genetic  order  ;  the  key  to  the  "  springing  and  germi- 
nant  fulfilment  of  prophecy  "  is  found.  Egypt  and 
Sodom  live  again;  "the  two  witnesses,"  Moses  and 
Elijah,  do  "  indeed  come  again " ;  the  Beast  and  the 


284       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

False  Prophet  crush  and  delude  wherever  power  and 
craft  rule ;  and  Babylon,  "  that  great  city,"  will  trade 
as  of  old  in  all  merchandise,  and  in  the  "souls  of 
men,"  until  she  shall  be  cast  like  a  "  millstone  into 
the  sea." 

But  this  seemingly  chaotic  flood  has  a  silent  on- 
ward drift.  Over  the  formless  void,  as  at  the  begin- 
ning, the  Spirit  broods.  The  first  Genesis  is  revealed 
in  the  second.  Out  of  the  cry  of  anguish,  the  thunder 
of  tempest,  the  crash  of  battle,  emerge  the  chiming  of 
harps,  the  radiance  of  glad  faces,  the  vision  of  peace ; 
out  of  confused  and  changing  figures  the  clear  outlines 
of  the  city  "  that  lieth  four  square  ; "  out  of  the  womb 
of  earth's  midnight  is  born  heaven's  everlasting  day. 
For  He  knows  the  "  thoughts  that  He  thinks  towards 
us,"  that  they  are  "  thoughts  of  peace  and  not  of 
evil,  to  give  us  an  expected  cridr 


THE    THEISTIC    BASIS    OF   EVOLUTION. 

By  rev.  JOHN  COTTON  SMITH,  D.D. 


X. 

THE    THEISTIC    BASIS    OF    EYOLUTIOK 

By  rev.  JOHN   COTTON  SMITH,  D.D. 

TN  considering  the  subject  of  "  The  Theistic  Basis  of 
-■-  Evolution,"  I  shall  endeavor  to  establish  this  prop- 
osition, —  that  supposing  the  law  of  evolution  to  be 
a  universal  law,  including  in  its  operation  all  the 
phenomena  of  the  universe,  we  have  in  it  an  im- 
mense gain  to  Theism,  and  an  argument  stronger 
than  any  which  has  yet  been  used  that  the  phe- 
nomenal universe,  in  all  its  minutest  details,  rests 
upon  an  invisible  power,  and  is  the  manifestation  of 
that  conscious  Intelligence  and  Will  which  we  caU 
God. 

Had  I  known,  when  I  selected  this  subject,  that 
one  so  pre-eminently  able  and  distinguished  as  Dr. 
McCosh  was  to  lecture  in  this  course  upon  substan- 
tially the  same  subject,  I  should  have  abandoned  the 
undertaking,  and  left  the  field  to  the  exclusive  pos- 
session of  one  whom  I  so  highly  honor,  and  to  whom 
I  am  glad  to  acknowledge  myself  as  so  greatly  in- 
debted. As  it  is,  I  am  led  to  feel  less  regret  at  the 
coincidence  of  the  subjects  discussed,  inasmuch  as 


288       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

while  I  heartily  concur  in  the  general  drift  of  Dr. 
McCosh's  lecture,  there  are  some  points  which,  I 
think,  should  be  more  decidedly  expressed. 

In  the  consideration,  then,  of  our  subject,  we  are 
first  to  ask  what  the  universality  and  all-comprehen- 
siveness of  the  Law  of  Evolution  involv^es.  This  can 
only  be  determined  by  following  the  history  of  phe- 
nomena, as  we  may  be  able  to  construct  it  from  the 
materials  which  come  under  human  observation,  and 
in  accordance  with  the  conditions  under  which  human 
opinion  is  formed. 

Setting  aside,  then,  for  the  present,  all  inquiry  as 
to  the  origin  of  phenomena,  or  as  to  any  power  by 
which  the  changes  of  phenomena  are  produced,  or  as 
to  any  object  which  phenomena  with  their  successive 
changes  may  be  designed  to  accomplish,  we  are  simply 
to  consider,  as  far  as  we  can,  the  phenomena  of  the 
universe  as  they  successively  appear,  on  the  supposi- 
tion of  a  universal  evolution.  Whether  there  was 
a  time  when  the  perceptible  emerged  from  the  imper- 
ceptible, or  the  perceptible  has  always  existed,  is  not 
now  to  be  considered.  However  that  may  be,  there 
has  been  a  period  in  time  when  the  phenomenal  is 
found  to  have  existed,  probably  in  a  universally 
extended  homogeneous  mass,  in  a  state 'of  motion. 
Throughout  this  mass  there  is  found  to  be  a  tendency 
to  contraction  or  integration  around  various  centres. 
There  is,  also,  found  to  be  a  process  by  which  differ- 
entiation in  the  mass  is  established,  so  that  what  was 
homogeneous  becomes  more  or  less  heterogeneous. 
The  universally  diffused  mass  is  broken  up  into  ro- 


THE   THEISTIC   BASIS   OF   EVOLUTION.  289 

tatiiig  spheres.  These  spheres  in  the  process  of  con- 
traction or  integration  throw  off  smaller  spheres,  wliich, 
retaining  the  direction  of  their  motion,  revolve  around 
the  sphere  from  which  they  have  been  thrown. 

In  following  the  further  progress  of  this  evolution, 
which  has  thus  resulted  in  the  sidereal  system,  we  are 
to  confine  ourselves  to  our  own  globe,  which  must  be 
supposed  to  be  in  some  sense  typical  of  other  worlds, 
and  which  furnishes  us  with  all  the  necessary  elements 
of  the  problem. 

Taking  the  earth,  then,  at  the  time  when  it  was 
thrown  off  from  the  gradually  cooling  mass,  the  same 
general  process  goes  on.  There  is  continued  con- 
traction and  integration,  and  wider  distinctions  and 
differences  of  structure  are  established.  With  the 
gradual  cooling  of  the  earth  a  crust  is  formed,  and  the 
precipitation  of  vast  masses  of  vapor,  in  the  form  of 
water,  takes  place.  The  dry  land  and  the  seas  appear. 
Step  by  step,  without  any  break  in  the  continuous 
chain,  each  phenomenon  linked  with  preceding  phe- 
nomena, vast  changes  occur  in  the  structure  of  the 
globe,  resulting  in  its  diversified  surface  and  manifold 
conditions. 

At  last  out  of  the  inorganic,  it  may  be  at  various 
points  and  at  various  times,  in  forms  scarcely  distin- 
guishable from  those  which  have  preceded,  the  germs 
of  the  organic  world  appear.  The  process  has  at  last 
resulted  in  the  manifestation  of  life. 

Out  of  the  earth,  without  any  break  in  the  conti- 
nuity of  the  process,  the  vegetal  kingdom  has  come 
forth.     The  process  of  integration  and  differentiation 

19 


290       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

/goes  on  until  the  earth  is  covered  with  multitudinous 
Lforms  of  trees  and  plants  and  flowers.     But  in  this 
/plant  life  we  find  almost  imperceptible  gradations  by 
"which  the  transition  to  animal  life  is  made.     There 
is  a  widely  extended  area  of  life  where  it  is  exceed- 
ingly difficult  to  determine  whether  the  forms  belong 
to  the  vegetal  or  animal  world.     In  the  course  of  time, 
however,  the  distinctions  of  the  animal  world  become 
more  and  more  pronounced,  and  a  similar  process  of 
integration  and  differentiation  results  in  the  various 
forms  of  animal  life. 

On  the  long  line  of  animal  development  there  is  at 
last  a  persistent  approach  in  the  order  of  Primates  to 
the  genus  Man.  By  imperceptible  advance  a  stage  in 
the  evolution  is  reached,  where  the  characteristics  are 
for  a  time  indeterminate,  but  finally,  through  progen- 
itors of  whom,  perhaps,  there  are  no  traces  now,  there 
'  has  come  to  be  Man  upon  the  earth. 

Still  the  process  goes  on.  The  low  and  brutal  as- 
pects of  primitive  human  life  gradually  disappear. 
Society  comes  to  exist,  and  tends  to  more  and  more 
complex  forms.  Religious  ideas  clothe  themselves 
in  religious  systems.  Moral  distinctions  come  to  be 
more  and  more  clearly  defined,  and  through  almost 
imperceptible  gradations  of  progress  the  marvellous 
achievements  of  the  highest  civilization  have  been 
reached.  •  :  m  Vvl)  (v.-     -     '  f    » 

Careful  study  of  the  phenomenal  world  has  led  to 
the  discovery  of  certain  laws  which  serve  to  render 
in  some  degree  comprehensible  the  nature  and  method 
of  this  process.     Such  laws  are  those  of  the  persist- 


THE   THEISTIC   BASIS   OF   EVOLUTION.  291 

ence  of  force,  of  the  persistence  of  the  same  relations 
among  forces,  of  the  continuity  of  motion  in  the  di- 
rection of  least  resistance,  of  the  evolution  of  the 
heterogeneous  from  the  homogeneous,  of  the  contin- 
uous redistribution  of  matter  and  motion,  of  heredity, 
of  natural  selection,  and  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
These  are  simply  statements  of  some  of  the  conditions 
of  the  process,  and  of  the  methods  by  which  it  is 
carried  on. 

This  is  as  broad  a  statement  of  the  law  of  evolution 
as  can  be  made,  for  it  recognizes  no  break  in  the 
invariable  continuity  from  the  first  moment  of  time 
until  now,  and  includes  every  minutest  change  which 
has  taken  place  in  the  phenomenal  universe. 

Supposing  this,  then,  to  be  the  true  history  of  the 
phenomenal  world,  we  are  to  see  wliat  bearing  it  has 
upon  our  belief  in  a  personal  God. 

Does  the  universality  of  the  law  of  evolution,  sup- 
posing it  to  be  established,  place  Theism  at  any  disad- 
vantage, so  that  it  will  be  any  the  less  sure  a  conviction  y^ 
of  the  mind  that  God  exists  ?  That  is  the  question 
first  to  be  considered.  We  have,  then,  simply  to  com- 
pare two  processes  in  nature;  one  in  which  the  law 
of  evolution,  while  it  is  almost  universal  in  its  opera- 
tion, has  been  on  certain  occasions,  now  admitted  to 
be  very  few,  interrupted,  and  a  new  order  of  phenom- 
ena, not  growing  out  of  any  previously  existing,  has 
been  introduced.  Such  occasions  are  supposed,  by 
those  who  regard  this  interrupted  process  as  the  true 
order  of  nature,  to  have  been  at  least  two,  —  the  first 
appearance  of  life  in  general,  and  then  the  first  ap- 


292       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

pearance  of  human  life.  The  other  process  is  the  one 
which  we  have  been  considering,  in  which  all  plie- 
nomena  are  linked  with  preceding  phenomena,  so  that 
the  effect  upon  the  mind  is  that  of  a  perpetual  roll- 
r  ing  forth  of  phenomena  from  that  which  already 
exists. 

In  comparing  these  two  processes  there  is  one  thing 
first  of  all  to  be  considered.  When  we  speak  of  evo- 
lution, it  by  no  means  necessarily  follows  that  all  we 
find  in  any  particular  phenomenon  was  involved  in 
its  antecedent  phenomenon,  and  that  therefore  the 
-  whole  universe  was  actually  involved  in  the  phenom- 
ena with  which  the  process  of  evolution  began. 
"While  this  is  the  apparent  relation  which  antecedent 
have  to  succeeding  phenomena,  no  one  can  say  that 
there  is  not  some  power  on  the  invisible  side  of  nature 
which  adds  the  elements  of  difference  or  advance  at 
every  step  in  the  development.  But  suppose  that 
the  process  of  evolution  must  be  regarded  as  involv- 
ing the  whole  development  in  the  phenomena  with 
which  the  evolution  begins.  Is  there  anything  in 
this  idea  which  need  to  disturb  a  believer  in  a 
personal  God  ?  If  it  is  a  necessary  conception  of 
a  process  of  evolution  that  all  its  stages  shall  be 
involved  in  the  initial  step,  then  the  difficulty,  if  it 
be  one,  attends  the  partial  and  interrupted  processes 
of  evolution,  the  existence  of  which  no  one  can  deny, 
as  well  as  a  process  supposed  to  be  uninterrupted  and 
universal.  It  is  certainly  just  as  conceivable  that 
God,  for  I  am  now  reasoning  with  Theists,  should 
have  involved  the  whole  process  in  its  first  begin- 


THE  THEISTIC   BASIS   OF  EVOLUTION.  293 

nings,  as  to  have  involved  partial  evolutions  and 
developments  in  the  phenomena  from  which  they 
have  sprung.  If  evolution  must  be  conceived  of  as 
a  necessary  involving  of  the  whole  process  in  the 
first  step  with  which  it  starts,  then  all  the  stages  in 
the  evolution  of  the  inorganic  world  were  involved 
in  the  conditions  under  which  that  evolution  began. 
If  this  is  the  true  idea  of  evolution,  then  all  plants 
and  animals  were  involved  in  the  very  earliest  phe- 
nomena of  plant  or  animal  life ;  nay,  all  the  marvel-  A 
lous  developments  of  humanity  slumbered  potentially 
in  the  first  man.  But  if  this  can  be  conceived,  where 
is  the  difficulty  in  supposing  that  a  power  which 
could  thus  involve  such  vast  series  of  development 
in  the  phenomena  from  which  they  spring,  could 
endow  the  primitive  elements  from  which  nature  is 
built  up,  with  a  potency  which  should  secure  the 
orderly  development  of  the  stupendous  processes  of 
the  universe ;  and  thus  God  stand  behind  a  universal  X 
evolution  ?  And  surely  if  it  is  wonderful,  and  an 
argument  for  the  existence  of  an  Infinite  Power,  that 
there  should  be  these  long  lines  of  evolution  in  which 
the  whole  development  was  involved  in  the  beginning 
of  the  series,  then  is  it  much  more  wonderful,  and 
constitutes  a  much  stronger  argument  for  a  Divine 
Power,  that  not  merely  partial  series  of  development, 
but  that  the  whole  vast  evolution  lay  potentially  in 
the  original  germs,  out  of  which  it  has  been  brought 
forth. 

We  are  not,  however,  shut  up  to  this  conception 
of  evolution.      It  is  conceivable  that  the  elements  of 


294       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

difference  and  advance  have  not  been  involved  in 
preceding  phenomena,  but  have  been  added  at  each 
minutest  stage  of  the  development.  Taking  this 
view,  then,  we  may  unhesitatingly  affirm  that  it  is 
a  more  wonderful  exercise  of  wisdom  and  power  to 
have  carried  on  this  process  uninterruptedly,  from 
first  to  last,  than  to  have  interrupted  it  from  time 
to  time ;  as  if  it  were  necessary  to  draw  upon  some 
new  and  reserved  force  for  the  advancing  stages  of 
the  progress. 

So  far,  then,  as  the  question  lies  between  a  partial 
and  a  universal  evolution,  the  gain  for  Theism  is 
very  great  on  the  hypothesis  that  the  evolution 
is  continuous,  and  all-comprehending.  But  this,  it 
must  be  admitted,  only  partially  meets  the  case. 
The  advocates  of  the  hypothesis  of  immediate  and 
isolated  creation  in  certain  cases  may  reply;  the 
question  is  not  merely  between  universal  and  partial 
evolution,  but  between  universal  evolution  and  par- 
tial systems  of  evolution,  with  the  addition  of  certain 
acts  of  immediate  creation. 

Is  there,  then,  any  gain  for  Theism  in  the  hypothe- 
sis of  immediate  creation  in  the  introduction  of  life 
or  of  man  into  the  system  of  nature  ?  This  is  a 
question  also,  be  it  remembered,  between  Theists, 
who  differ  only  as  to  the  bearing  of  two  almost  paral- 
lel hypotheses  upon  the  subject  of  the  existence  and 
agency  of  God. 

It  may  be  said,  then,  in  the  first  place,  what  every 
Theist  will  be  compelled  to  acknowledge,  that  in 
every  step  in  a  process  of  evolution  —  and  that  there 


THE  THEISTIC   BASIS   OF  EVOLUTION.  295 

are  processes  of  evolution  no  Theist  now  will  under- 
take to  deny  —  there  is  involved  the  same  creative 
power  as  could  be  involved  in  any  act  of  immediate 
and  isolated  creation.  The  phenomenon  has  come  to 
exist.  The  power  which  has  caused  its  existence  is 
the  same,  no  matter  whether  it  is  exercised  in  one 
single  act  or  distributed  through  a  series  of  acts.  A 
child  is  born  into  the  world.  It  is  the  product  of  a 
process  of  evolution.  Is  it  any  the  less  a  product  of 
creative  power  ?  Would  it  be  any  more  a  creation  if 
a  pile  of  dust  had,  without  any  intervening  process, 
been  suddenly  changed  into  its  form  and  substance  ? 
Are  we  not  all  creatures  of  God  ?  and  would  not  the 
first  man  be  as  much  a  creature  of  God,  supposing 
him  to  have  been  born  of  progenitors  less  than 
human,  as  we  who  are  born,  so  far  as  our  recent  pedi- 
gree is  concerned,  of  human  ancestry  ?  Would  it 
make  him  any  more  a  creature  of  God,  if  from  a 
lump  of  clay,  without  any  apparent  intervention,  he 
had  suddenly  become  a  full-grown  man  ?  The  same 
power  must  be  admitted  to  be  somewhere  back  of 
the  act,  whether  it  occurs  in  a. process  of  development, 
or  as  the  result  of  an  immediate  isolated  exercise  of 
power. 

I  do  not  urge  at  this  point  the  higher  dignity  and 
rationality  (if  I  may  use  the  word)  of  a  process  of 
evolution  by  which  all  phenomena  are  linked  together 
in  an  orderly  development.  There  is,  however,  I  may 
be  permitted  to  say,  something  exceedingly  crude  in 
the  hypothesis  of  an  interrupted  process  of  develop- 
ment, as  if  God  needed  to  display- himself  by  arresting 


296        CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

the  orderly  sequence  of  phenomena  and  beginning, 
as  it  were,  anew ;  or  as  if  God  were  remedying  defects 

V^which  he  had  discovered  in  his  method,  and  were 
starting  once  more  with  the  benefit  of  acquired  ex- 
perience. I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  the  advocates  of 
immediate  and  isolated  acts  of  creation  thus  conceive 
of  God,  but  they  unconsciously  render  the  creative 
agency  of  God  liable  to  be  so  represented.  When 
pressed  with  the  proposition,  which  no  argument  can 
possibly  refute,  that  God  is  just  as  necessary  to  every 
step  in  a  process  of  evolution  as  he  is  to  any  act  of 
immediate  creation,  they  sometimes  display  an  impa- 
tience, perhaps  not  unnatural,  at  having  the  existence 
and  agency  of  God  established  by  any  other  method 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  favorite  one,  to  which  they 
have  become  accustomed.  It  almost  seems  at  times 
as  if  they  wanted  to  have  Theism  established  in  their 
own  way  or  not  at  all. 

During  the  late  war  Mr.  Seward  was  in  the  habit 
of  telling  a  story  which  illustrated  the  unreasonable- 
ness of  certain  opponents  of  slavery,  who  did  not 
wish  to  have  it  abolished  unless  it  could  be  done  in 
the  way  which  they  thought  best.     The  story  is  not 

r*  without  its  application  to  the  present  case.  Two  men 
who  were  intimate  friends  had  the  one  a  son,  and  the 
other  a  daughter,  and  it  had  been  a  cherished  purpose 
with  the  fathers  that  a  matrimonial  alliance  should 
crown  the  friendship  of  the  families.  When  intimat- 
ing, however,  to  the  children  that  the  whole  matter 
of  their  settlement  for  life  had  been  duly  arranged, 
there  was  an  unfortunate  omission  to  state  what  the 


THE   THEISTIC   BASIS   OF   EVOLUTION.  297 

proposed  arrangement  was.  The  young  people  hav- 
ing become  attached  to  each  other,  and  supposing 
that  the  intentions  of  their  fathers  were  inconsist- 
ent with  their  own  inclinations,  were  clandestinely 
married.  On  learning  this  fact,  one  of  the  fathers 
rushed  to  his  friend  to  offer  his  congratulations,  hnt 
found  him,  to  his  surprise,  in  a  towering  indignation. 
"  Are  you  not  satisfied,  now  that  you  have  had  your 
own  way  ? "  "  No,"  said  he,  "  I  'm  not  satisfied  merely 
to  have  my  own  way.  I  want  to  have  my  own  way 
in  my  own  way." 

The  question  as  to  which  view  of  the  agency  of 
God  in  nature  is  most  in  accordance  with  the  repre- 
sentations of  the  Bible  is,  of  course,  a  separate  ques- 
tion. It  may  be  well,  however,  to  say  a  word  as  to 
the  account  which  is  given  of  the  process  of  creation 
in  the  Book  of  Genesis.  There  is  nothing  in  it  which 
does  not  describe  equally  well  an  uninterrupted  pro- 
cess of  evolution,  in  which  there  are  periods  strongly 
marked  by  certain  characteristics,  such  as  the  six 
periods  called  days,  as  a  process  of  evolution  broken 
in  upon  by  a  discontinuance  and  resumption  of 
an  established  order  of  phenomena.  The  word  5^'ia 
which  is  translated  "create,"  does  not  necessarily, 
perhaps  not  at  all,  involve  the  idea  of  immediate 
creation.  It  means,  for  the  most  part  at  least,  to 
shape  and  to  form.  But  even  if  it  involved  immedi- 
ate creation,  it  would  not  answer  the  purpose  of  those 
who  reject  the  hypothesis  of  continuous  evolution. 
It  is  used  but  three  times  in  the  first  chapter  of  Gen- 
esis, —  once  in  connection  with  the  heavens  and  the 


f 


298       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

earth,  once  in  connection  with  great  whales,  and  once 
in  connection  with  man.  It  is  not  used  in  connec- 
tion with  the  first  introduction  of  life  upon  the  earth, 
and  in  the  case  of  man  it  does  not  mean  an  absolutely 
new  creation,  for  it  is  declared  that  he  was  created 
out  of  the  dust  of  the  earth.  The  whole  account  is 
a  marvellous  illustration  of  what  we  find  so  constantly 
in  Scripture,  —  the  description  of  natural  phenomena 
according  to  their  appearance,  a  description  which  is 
always  necessarily  true,  and  is  always  readily  adjust- 
able to  any  scientific  discoveries  which  may  be  made. 
How  the  author  of  the  Book  of  Genesis  could  have 
described  so  accurately  the  appearance  of  natural 
phenomena  thousands  of  ages  after  they  occurred, 
and  thousands  of  years  before  the  character  and  order 
of  the  phenomena  were  discovered  by  scientific  in- 
vestigation, it  is  for  those  who  reject  the  idea  of 
inspiration  to  decide.  No  apprehension  could  be 
more  unreasonable  than  that  the  authority  of  the 
Bible  is  in  danger  of  being  overthrown  by  any  scien- 
tific hypotheses,  be  they  true  or  false.  They  cannot 
be  used  successfully  against  the  claims  of  the  Scrip- 
tures as  a  Divine  revelation.  There  was  a  striking 
device  among  the  Huguenots,  I  think,  representing 
men  with  hammers,  striking  upon  an  anvil.  Other 
men  were  standing  by  with  fresh  hammers  to  take 
the  place  of  those  that  were  broken.  "  Pound  away, 
you  rebels,"  was  the  motto;  "your  hammers  break, 
the  anvil  of  God's  word  stands." 

The  point  which  we  have  thus  far  reached  seems, 
then,  to  be  this,  that  the  hypothesis  of  a  universal 


THE  THEISTIC  BASIS   OF  EVOLUTION.  299 

and  all-comprehending  process  of  evolution  is  a  gain  > 
for  Theism,  if  it  can  be  established.  It  brings  the 
agency  of  God  in  nature  into  harmony  with  all  the 
higher  conceptions  to  which  the  best  philosophy  has 
given  rise.  It  removes  the  embarrassments  which  are 
sure  to  attend  any  effort  to  make  an  act  of  special  and 
immediate  creation  cognizable  by  the  mind,  and  it 
invests  the  whole  relation  of  God  to  the  phenomenal 
universe  with  new  dignity  and  grandeur.  It  has  been 
claimed  by  some  of  the  disciples  of  positive  science 
that  the  enlarged  knowledge  of  nature  which  each 
generation  gains  is  gradually  displacing  the  idea  of  J 
any  personal  agency  in  the  world  of  nature.  Let  me 
tell  you  what  it  is  really  doing.  It  is  displacing  what 
I  call  untheistic  conceptions  of  nature,  which  substi- 
tuted the  agency  of  inferior  supernatural  powers  in 
the  place  of  the  agency  of  God.  Under  its  influence 
the  "  fair  humanities,"  as  Coleridge  calls  them,  of  the  ^ 
old  religion  have  vanished.  The  supernatural  beings 
in  forests,  in  valleys,  by  the  sides  of  streams,  —  the 
fairies  of  mediaeval  superstition,  the  great  angels  of  the 
spheres  of  whom  Kepler  dreamed,  are  known  no  more. 
What  has  come  in  their  place  ?  Are  we  surrounded 
by  a  mere  unideal,  phenomenal  universe,  which  has 
grown  out  of  no  thought,  no  all-comprehending  plan  ? 
No,  a  thousand  times  no  !  For  if  there  is  this  univer- 
sal, all-comprehending  law  of  evolution,  then  there 
is  a  stupendous  plan  of  the  universe,  and  the  great 
Power  which  sways  the  world  touches  nature  at 
every  moment  of  time  and  at  every  point  in  space. 
The  progress  of  science  is  banishing  the  false  super- 


300       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

-jK natural,  but  only  that  "God  may"  to  us  "be  all  in 
all." 

It  is  something,  then,  to  be  hailed  with  joy,  if  it  shall 
be  found  that  science  has  made  this  contribution  to 
a  more  rational  conception  of  the  universe  in  which  a 
nobler  Theism  is  necessarily  involved.  We  are  not 
disposed  to  sit  down  quietly  under  the  verdict  that  it 
is  still  unproven.  We  rejoice  to  be  moved  forward  by 
the  impulse  of  a  grand  anticipation,  and  we  yield  our- 
selves to  the  enthusiasm  which  forecasts  this  great 
vindication  of  the  highest  rational  relation  of  God 
to  nature  and  man. 

We  are  prepared,  then,  for  a  consideration,  in  gen- 
eral, of  the  grounds  on  which  an  acceptance  of  evolu- 
tion as  a  universal  law  is  anticipated.  As  we  have 
already  followed  the  probable  history  of  phenomena 
on  the  hypothesis  of  universal  evolution,  we  can  now 
notice  certain  facts  which  seem  strongly  to  indicate 
the  truth  of  this  hypothesis.  In  the  sidereal  system, 
for  instance,  as  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has  pointed  out, 
we  have  actually  at  the  present  time  within  our  field 

/of  observation  the  various  stages  in  its  development 
to  which  I  have  already  referred.  The  process  of 
integration  of  which  I  have  spoken  would  of  course 
be  more  or  less  rapid  according  to  the  size  of  the 
spheres  into  which  the  original  mass  was  broken.  It 
is  not  unlikely  that  there  are  instances  in  which  the 
whole  cycle  of  changes  has  been  passed  through,  and 
where  the  integration  has  been  followed  by  a  disper- 
sion and  diffusion  of  matter  until  it  has  returned  to 
its  original  homogeneous  condition.     Such  seems  to 


THE  THEISTIC   BASIS   OF  EVOLUTION.  301 

have  been  the  case  with  certain  nebulte  where  matter 
now  exists  in  a  gaseous  form,  constituting  star-dust, 
or  the  material  out  of  which  stars  are  again  to  be 
made.  Then  there  are  other  vast  masses  of  matter 
where  the  process  of  integration  seems  to  be  far  ad- 
vanced. The  spheres  have  been  drawn  closely  together. 
Their  proximity  has  given  rise  to  anomalous  systems 
such  as  that  of  binary  stars.  The  aggregation  of  the 
mass  is  indicated  also  by  the  vast  solitudes  in  the 
heavens  from  which  it  has  retreated  in  upon  itself. 
Spheres  in  the  same  system  are  in  different  stages 
of  their  progress.  Our  globe,  for  instance,  being  so 
much  smaller  than  Jupiter,  is  in  a  much  more  ad- 
vanced state  of  integration.  The  moon  being  so  much 
smaller,  the  process  of  integration  in  it  is  already  so 
much  the  more  complete.  We  have,  therefore,  proba- 
bly within  our  own  view,  accessible  to  the  scrutiny  of 
the  telescope  and  spectroscope,  all  the  various  stages 
of  sidereal  evolution. 

When  we  strive  to  follow  the  steps  of  the  development 
from  the  inorganic  to  the  organic,  we  are  to  remember 
what  Dr.  McCosh  has  so  ably  pointed  out,  that  the 
minuteness  of  the  changes  involved  does  not  account 
for  the  introduction  of  any  new  principle.  Unless  life 
was  by  some  power  put  originally  into  the  series  from 
which  it  is  at  last  evolved,  or  is  added  to  it  when 
it  first  appears,  we  should  have  no  life  in  the  series 
at  all.  But  the  point  to  be  noticed  here  is,  that 
there  are  indications  that  when  life  first  appeared  on 
the  earth  there  was  no  apparent  break  in  thecontinuity 
of  phenomena,  but  a  simple  movement  by  gradations, 


302  CHRIST   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT. 

which  could  hardly  be  perceived,  to  the  various  phe- 
nomena of  life.  It  makes  the  transition  more  com- 
prehensible to  remember  that  the  matter  constituting 
the  living  world  is  identical  with  that  which  forms 
the  inorganic  world.  All  the  forces  of  the  living 
world  are  probably  identical  with  the  forces  of  the  in- 
organic world,  or  are  convertible  into  them.  Organic 
nature  is  built  up  all  the  time  out  of  inorganic  nature, 
and  returns  into  inorganic  nature  again.  One  who  is 
familiar  with  crystalline  formation,  with  its  delicate 
shoots  branching  out  on  either  side  from  a  central 
axis,  would  not  be  conscious  of  any  disturbance  of  an 
established  order  in  the  appearance  of  plants  in  the 
midst  of  what  had  hitherto  been  inorganic  nature. 

If  we  turn  from  this  point  to  one  tliat  has  been 
treated  with  very  great  clearness  and  ability  by  Mr. 
John  Fiske,  we  shall  find  most  striking  corroborations 
of  the  hypothesis  of  universal  evolution.  The  view 
which  Mr.  Fiske  presents  is  that  of  the  oneness  of  all 
life  at  its  base.  It  starts,  no  matter  on  what  line  of 
development  it  may  be,  from  the  same  point.  Taking, 
then,  a  point  of  origin,  there  is,  according  to  Mr.  Fiske, 
a  divergence  in  diverse  directions  of  vegetal  and 
animal  life,  the  more  widely  varying  as  they  are  fur- 
ther removed  from  the  original  point  of  divergence. 
Then,  take  in  connection  with  this  Professor  Asa 
Gray's  exceedingly  interesting  and  valuable  work 
on  the  "Eelations  of  Eeligion  and  Science,"  where 
he  shows  that  recent  discoveries  have  completely 
bridged  over  the  chasm  which  was  formerly  supposed 
to  exist  between  animal  and  vegetable  life.     If  we 


THE   THEISTIC   BASIS   OF   EVOLUTION.  303 

take  into  account  also  the  wonderfully  interesting  work 
of  Mr.  Darwin  on  plants,  in  which  the  rudiments  of 
purpose  and  volition  in  plant  life  are  clearly  shown 
to  exist,  we  shall  be  likely  to  be  deeply  impressed 
with  the  unity  and  generic  connection  of  all  life. 

If  we  turn  then  to  Mr  Darwin's  marvellously  com- 
plete and  exhaustive  consideration  of  the  subject  of 
the  Descent  of  Man,  it  will  be  found  to  be  a  very 
strong  argument  for  the  hypothesis  of  universal  evo- 
lution, or  at  least  for  the  derivation  of  man  from 
the  animal  life  by  which  he  was  preceded.  To 
say  nothing  else,  it  seems  impossible  to  account  for 
traces  in  man  of  the  lower  animal  development,  if 
not  on  this  supposition.  When  we  find  rudimentary 
organs  in  man  which  have  their  counterpart  as  useful 
and  necessary  organs  in  lower  animals,  it  is  difficult 
to  doubt  the  transmission  by  heredity  of  these  abor- 
tive organs  to  man.  But  more  than  this,  how  marvel- 
lous is  the  revelation  which  is  made  to  us  in  human 
embryology !  The  human  child  before  birth  passes 
through  all  the  characteristic  aspects  of  a  lower  ani- 
mal life.  It  seems  to  bear  the  marks  of  its  origin  at 
every  step  of  its  development  until  birth.  There  is 
no  meaning  in  the  presence  of  these  aspects  unless 
they  are  traces  of  an  actual  development  which  has 
been  passed  through.  And  when  we  find  that  the 
same  fact  presents  itself  in  lower  animal  life,  where 
its  significance  is  by  common  consent  recognized,  we 
hesitate  at  least  to  refuse  to  recognize  its  significance 
in  the  case  of  man. 

A  remarkable  confirmation  of  this  view  is  to  be  found 


304       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

in  the  discovery  by  Professor  Marsh  of  the  various 
stasres  by  which  the  horse  as  he  now  exists  has  been 
/*Meveloped  from  an  animal  with  five  toes.  This  most 
significant  discovery  is  now  so  well  known,  and  its 
bearing  so  well  understood,  that  I  need  not  dwell 
longer  upon  it.  "■ 

As  it  is  no  part  of  my  purpose  to  construct  an 
argument  in  behalf  of  the  universality  of  the  law  of 
evolution,  but  only  to  point  out  some  of  the  promi- 
nent indications  that  it  will  come  to  be  recognized  as 
a  universal  law,  I  do  not  feel  called  upon  to  consider 
the  difficulties  and  objections  which  are  urged  against 
it,  though  I  feel  confident  that,  w^ere  there  time  so  to 
do,  the  conclusion  already  reached  would  be  found  to 
be  only  the  more  strongly  established. 

There  is  a  wonderful  passage  in  Coleridge's  "  Aids 
to  Eeflection,"  which  can  hardly  be  considered  as  less 
"  than  a  prophecy  of  the  discovery  of  this  great  law : 
"  Every  rank  of  creatures,  as  it  ascends  in  the  scale  of 
creation,  leaves  death  behind  it  or  under  it.  The 
/metal,  at  its  height  of  being,  seems  a  mute  prophecy 
of  the  coming  vegetation,  into  a  mimic  semblance  of 
which  it  crystallizes.  The  blossom  and  flower,  the 
acme  of  vegetable  life,  divide  into  correspondent  or- 
gans with  reciprocal  functions,  and  by  instinctive 
motions  and  approximations  seems  impatient  of  that 
fixure  by  which  it  is  diff'erenced  in  kind  from  the 
flower-shaped  Psyche  that  flutters  with  free  wing 
above  it.  And  wonderfully,  in  the  insect  realm,  doth> 
the  irritability,  the  proper  seat  of  instinct,  while  yet 
the   nascent   sensibility  is   subordinated  thereto, — 


THE  THEISTIC   BASIS   OF  EVOLUTION.  305 

most  wonderfully,  I  say,  does  the  muscular  life  in  the 
insect,  and  the  musco-arterial  in  the  bird,  imitate  and 
typically  rehearse  the  adaptive  understanding,  yes,  and 
the  moral  affections  and  charities  of  man.  Let  us 
carry  ourselves  back  in  spirit  to  the  mysterious  week, 
the  teeming  work-days  of  the  Creator,  as  they  rose  in 
vision  before  the  inspired  historian  of  the  generations 
of  the  heavens  and  of  tlie  earth,  in  the  day  that  the 
Lord  God  made  the  earth  and  the  heavens.  And 
who  that  hath  watched  their  way  with  an  understand- 
ing heart  could,  as  the  vision  evolving  still  advanced 
toward  liim,  contemplate  the  loyal  and  filial  bee ;  the 
home-building,  wedded  and  divorceless  swallow ;  and, 
above  all,  the  manifoldly  intelligent  ant  tribes,  with 
their  commonwealths  and  confederacies,  their  war- 
riors and  miners,  the  husband-folk  that  fold  in  their 
tiny  flocks  on  the  honeyed  leaf,  and  the  virgin  sisters, 
with  the  holy  instincts  of  maternal  love,  detached  and 
in  selfless  purity,  —  and  not  say.  to  himself,  Behold 
the  shadow  of  approaching  humanity,  the  sun  rising 
from  behind  in  the  kindling  morning  of  creation.  Thus 
all  lower  natures  find  their  highest  good  in  semblances 
and  seekings  of  that  which  is  higher  and  better.  All 
things  strive  to  ascend,  and  ascend  in  their  striving." 
But  now  we  are  brought  to  a  point  where  the  pur- 
pose and  direction  of  the  argument  are  to  be  changed. 
The  argument  so  far  has  been  addressed  for  the  most 
part  to  Theists,  and  has  had  for  its  object  to  reconcile 
them  to  certain  supposed  principles  and  facts  in  na- 
ture, and  to  show  that  these  principles  and  facts,  if 
established,  can  only  add  to  the  firmness  of  that  con- 
20 


/ 


/ 


306       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

elusion  by  which  we  hold  fast  to  the  being  of  a  per- 
sonal God.  The  considerations  thus  presented  must 
avail  with  Theists,  for  they  rest  upon  principles  which 
all  Theists  admit.  Now,  however,  we  find  ourselves 
confronted  with  the  difficulties  of  those  who  have 
come  to  understand  clearly  the  generic  unity  of  the 
phenomenal  universe,  have  embraced  it  all  in  one  stu- 
pendous, all-comprehending  law,  but  go  no  further, 
and  fail  to  recognize  the  conscious  intelligence  and 
will  on  which  all  phenomena  necessarily  rest.  When 
the  Theist  accepts  the  universal  evolution,  he  supplies 
at  once  the  theistic  basis  in  thought.  But  for  those 
who  see  only  the  phenomena  linked  together  in  this 
process  of  universal  development,  a  new  line  of  argu- 
ment is  necessary  by  which  the  theistic  basis  of  the 
evolution  may  be  established. 

We  have  a  point  to  start  from  in  the  distinct  affir- 
mations of  one  who  would  undoubtedly  dissent  from 
the  conclusions  I  shall  draw  as  to  the  theistic  basis 
of  evolution.  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  for  I  refer  to 
him,  says :  "  By  the  persistence  of  force  we  really 
mean  the  persistence  of  some  power  which  transcends 
our  knowledge  and  conception.  The  manifestations, 
as  occurring  either  in  ourselves  or  outside  of  us,  do 
not  persist ;  but  that  which  persists  is  the  unknown 
Cause  of  these  manifestations.  In  other  words,  as- 
serting the  persistence  of  force  is  but  another  mode 
of  asserting  an  unconditioned  Eeality,  without  begin- 
ning or  end." 

Here  we  find  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  that  Ag- 
nosticism, which  is  supposed  to  be  by  many  the  final 


THE  THEISTIC   BASIS   OF  EVOLUTION.  307 

attitude  which  the  human  ftiind  is  to  assume  in  regard 
to  that  Power  which  the  Theist  calls  God.  The  whole 
realm  in  which  this  Power  resides,  this  theory  claims, 
is  necessarily  the  Unknowable. 

Now  I  undertake  to  say  that  the  universality  of 
evolution,  if  it  is  established,  is  pre-eminently  calcu- 
lated to  overthrow  the  agnostic  position.  It  is  vain, 
indeed,  even  at  the  point  where  we  already  stand, 
to  talk  about  the  Unknowable.  When  Mr.  Spencer 
tells  us  that  the  Unknowable  is  a  Force  which  persists 
as  a  permanent  reality,  without  beginning  and  with- 
out end,  and  that  the  phenomenal  universe  is  onl}^  a 
manifestation  of  this  eternal  Eeality,  he  gives  us  some 
most  important  items  of  knowledge  about  that  which 
he  calls  the  Unknown.  But  looking  at  the  matter  in 
the  light  of  evolution,  what  is  clearer  than  that  we 
must  ascribe  Unity  to  that  Power.  It  is  everywhere 
the  same.  It  must  always  be  described  by  the  same 
terms.  It  works  throughout  the  universe  by  the  same 
methods,  and  accomplishes  the  same  ends.  It  binds 
all  phenomena  into  one  stupendous  system,  which 
can  be  conceived  of  by  the  mind  instructed  by  famili- 
arity with  processes  of  evolution  only  as  a  unit,  —  its 
various  parts  related  to  each  other  and  to  the  whole 
by  one  vast  operation  and  one  universal  idea.  On 
the  supposition  of  an  all-embracing  evolution,  no  phe- 
nomena can  possibly  escape  this  unifying  process  of 
the  mind.  The  unity  of  the  whole,  as  contemplated 
by  the  mind,  is  absolutely  complete.  We  have,  then, 
as  a  result  of  a  strictly  scientific  process  the  first  great 
attribute  of  God  :  "  Thy  God  is  One  God." 


308       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

There  is  another  conclnsion  to  which  we  are  irre- 
sistibly led,  and  that  is,  that  the  process  over  which 
this  Power  presides  is  the  consummation  of  a  vast 
design,  and  the  outcome  of  a  plan  in  which  every 

f  phenomenon  is  so  linked  with  all  other  phenomena 
tliat  it  must  have  been  contemplated  from  the  iirst. 
I  know  very  well  the  ridicule  with  which  the  idea  of 

j((^esign  in  nature  is  treated  by  the  disciples  of  the 
agnostic  school.  And  oftentimes  abundant  occasion 
is  given  for  this  ridicule  by  those  who  undertake  to 
interpret  the  designs  which  they  suppose  they  have 
discovered  in  the  natural  world.  In  the  life  of  Hein- 
rich  Heine  is  an  account  of  his  interview  with  a 
citizen  of  Goslar,  who  undertook  to  entertain  him  by 
remarks  on  the  proofs  of  purpose  in  nature.  The 
trees,  this  individual  said,  were  green  because  green 
was  good  for  the  eyes.  To  which  Heine  replied,  "  No 
doubt,"  and  added  that  "  God  had  created  cattle  be- 
cause meat-broth  was  a  strengthening  diet  for  man ; 
that  he  had  made  donkeys  that  they  might  serve  for 
human  comparison,  and  that  he  had  created  man  that 
he  might  eat  meat-broth  and  not  be  a  donkey."  "  So 
long,"  Heine  continues,  "  as  this  citizen  was  with  me 
all  nature  lost  its  magic ;  as  soon  as  he  was  gone  the 
trees  began  again  to  speak,  the  sunbeams  to  be  tune- 
ful, the  meadow  flowerets  to  dance,  and  the  blue 
heaven  to  embrace  the  green  earth.  Yes,  I  knew  bet- 
ter. God  has  created  man  to  adore  the  splendor  of 
the  world.  In  the  Bible,  the  memoirs  of  God,  it  is 
expressly  stated  that  he  created  man  for  his  praise 
and  glory." 


THE  THEISTIC   BASIS   OF   EVOLUTION.  309 

But  while  men  may  be  sadly  mistaken  in  their 
efforts  to  interpret  the  designs  of  the  power  in  nature 
which  this  school  calls  the  Unknowable,  the  existence 
of  design  is  established  by  a  strictly  scientific  process. 
Prof.  Bowen,  Dr.  Peabody,  and  the  Bishop  of  Carlisle 
have  of  late  rendered  very  valuable  service  by  the  ap-  sc. 
plication  of  mathematics  to  the  establishing  of  moral 
truth.  It  is  an  accepted  principle  in  the  "logic  of 
chance,"  that  if  a  certain  proportion  out  of  a  given 
number  of  phenomena  contribute  to  a  certain  end, 
that  the  probabilities,  mathematically  expressed,  that 
the  end  was  designed  are  so  great  that  it  would  be 
unreasonable  to  doubt.  Even  suppose  nature  to  be  a 
congeries  of  disjointed  systems,  each  one  traceable  to 
an  independent  origin,  still  the  evidence  of  design, 
by  this  method,  would  be  overwhelming.  But  if  all 
phenomena,  linked  together  as  they  are  supposed  to 
be,  on  the  hypothesis  of  universal  evolution,  are  found 
to  contribute  to  an  orderly  and  advancing  progress, 
then  the  probabilities  in  favor  of  design,  as  against 
the  probability  of  a  fortuitous  concourse  of  phenom- 
ena contributing  to  a  certain  end,  could  be  expressed 
only  by  a  numerical  statement,  the  figures  of  which 
could  not  be  contained  on  the  whole  surface  of  the 
globe. 

The  authors  of  the  "  Rejected  Addresses,"  in  their 
commemoration  of  the  rebuilding  of  Drury  Lane  The- 
atre, very  cleverly  satirized  the  doctrine  of  Lucretius  y^ 
that  the  world  came  to  be  by  chance.  Applying  the 
])rinciple  of  chance  to  the  building  up  of  this  struc- 
ture, they  say :  — 


310       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

"From  floating  elements  in  chaos  hurled, 
Self-fonned  of  atoms,  sprang  the  infant  world. 
No  great  First  Cause  inspired  the  happy  plot. 
But  all  was  matter,  — and  no  matter  what,  — 
Atoms  attracted  by  some  law  occult, 
Settling  in  spheres,  —  this  globe  was  the  result. 
I  sing  how  casual  bricks,  in  airy  climb, 
Encountered  casual  cow-hair,  casual  lime  ; 
How  rafters,  borne  through  wondering  clouds  elate. 
Kissed  in  their  slope  blue  elemental  slate. 
Clasped  solid  beams  in  chance-directed  fury, 
And  gave  to  birth  our  renovated  Drury." 

If,  however,  in  spite  of  the  stupendous  unreason- 
ableness of  such  a  position,  even  from  a  strictly  sci- 
entific point  of  view,  any  one  should  cling  to  the 
monstrous  absurdity  that  all  things  may  have  come 
to  be  as  they  are  by  chance,  then  is  there  at  least  an 
equal  possibility  that  chance  may  have  given  us  a 

'^  moral  law,  a  supernatural  system,  miracles,  redemp- 
tion, eternal  life.  If,  then,  this  inscrutable  power,  as 
it  is  called,  has. the  attribute  of  unity,  and  works  with 
design  according  to  a  plan  excluding  chance,  all  of 
which  is  scientifically  established,  there  would  seem 
to  be  little  need  of  considering  the  question  whether 
mind  may  not  be  a  mere  attribute  of  matter,  —  a  mere 
material  development.  For,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
impossibility  of  proving  that  there  is  any  such  thing 
as  we  call  matter,  while  it  is  unquestionable  that 
there  is  what  we  call  mind,  there  is  no  little  reason 
for  supposing  that  mind  and  what  we  call  matter  are 
inseparably  united,  to  be  conceived  of  under  one  idea. 

-ytv.So  that  mind  necessarily  underlies  the  material  uni- 
verse. 


y 


THE   THEISTIC   BASIS   OF  EVOLUTION.  311 

But  one  of  the  most  significant  facts  in  this  whole 
controversy  is  yet  to  be  considered.  This  agnostic 
position,  so  far  as  it  is  atheistic  in  its  tendency,  is  /^ 
broken  down  by  its  own  advocates.  There  is  nothing 
more  remarkable  than  this  in  the  whole  history  of 
philosophy. 

The  men  to  whom  I  shall  refer  are  Professor  Huxley, 
Schopenhauer,  and  Hartmann.  We  find  these  phi- 
losophers, who  either  assert  our  ignorance  of  God,  or 
deny  his  existence  altogether,  talking  about  forces  and 
a  universal  force,  —  and  when  they  have  searched 
phenomena  through  and  through,  they  admit  that  there  \/ 
is  a  mysterious  force  beneath  which  eludes  their 
grasp.  Then  Professor  Huxley  gives  us  the  basis  of 
a  belief  in  a  personal  God  when,  baffled  in  his  inves- 
tigation of  the  inner  mysteries  of  nature,  he  says : 
"If  I  were  compelled  to  choose,  I  do  not  know 
whether  I  should  express  the  facts  of  nature  in  terms 
of  matter  or  terms  of  spirit."  So  that,  after  all,  this 
whole  system  of  materialism  which  has  so  much 
disquieted  some,  and  been  so  enthusiastically  de- 
fended by  others,  may  have  been  dealing  all  the  time 
with  an  immaterial  and  ideal  universe  resting  in  and 
existing  only  in  the  Divine  mind. 

But  this  admission  of  the  utter  baselessness  possibly 
of  the  whole  materialistic  system  is  not  all.  It  leaves 
us  the  reasonableness  of  the  supposition  that  there  is 
a  universal  spirit  which  either  penetrates  all  nature 
or  is  nature  itself.  But  now  see  how  the  other  phi- 
losophers build  up  for  us  the  argument  in  behalf  of  a 
personal  God.    A  personal  God  must  have  wiU.    Well, 


312       CHKIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 

7^ but  Schopenhauer  says  that  all  force  is  will.  He  goes' 
further  and  says  that  all  matter  is  force,  and  that  there- 
fore matter  is  known  to  us  only  as  will.  There  is,  then, 
one  all-pervading  will;  what  seem  to  be  causes  in 
nature  are  only  the  occasions  for  the  manifestation 
of  the  universal  will.  But  then  this  infinite  will  is 
not  a  personal  God,  for  a  personal  God  must  have  in- 
telligence as  well  as  will. 

Then  comes  Hartmann  and  says  that  there  is  not 
only  a  universal  will  into  which  all  phenomena  are 
J^resolved,  but  that  it  is  an  intelligent,  though  uncon- 
scious, will.  This  thinking  and  willing  power  lays 
out  the  plan  of  the  universe,  wills  it  to  be  such  as  it 
,  is,  and  carries  all  things  on  to  their  accomplishment. 
y^'-  This  universal  power  is  like  a  God  in  a  trance.  Here 
Hartmann  leaves  us.  But  see  the  admissions  which 
have  been  wrung  from  these  deniers  of  a  personal 
God.  First,  that  everything,  after  all,  may  be  spirit, 
thought,  ideas,  mind.  Then  that  there  is,  at  any  rate, 
a  universal  will ;  and  then,  finally,  that  this  universal 
will  is  infinitely  intelligent,  and  adapts  all  means  to 
all  ends.  We  need  now  simply  to  add  consciousness 
and  we  have  a  personal  God.  Add  then  love  and 
goodness,  and  we  have  our  Creator  and  heavenly 
Father. 

ISTow  this  infinite,  intellijTjent  will  without  conscious- 

vi   ness  I  call  an  imperfect  and  abnormal  God.     There  is 

^    not  enough  of  God  in  it  to  satisfy  the  necessities  of 

reason.     There  is  too  much  to  render  it  possible  to 

reconcile  it  with  a  denial  of  a  personal  God.     Is  it 

not  reasonable,  for  that  is  the  line  of  inquiry  we 


THE   THEISTIC   BASIS   OF   EVOLUTION.  313 

are  now  pursuing,  that  if  there  is  a.  God  at  all  it 
should  be  a  normal  God,  with  consciousness  and  af- 
fections, as  well  as  intelligence  and  will  ? 

An  infinite,  intelligent  will  without  consciousness  yC_ 
I  hold  to  be  an  impossible  conception.  Having  the 
intelligent  will,  the  consciousness  must  in  all  reason 
be  granted,  and  then  come  in  all  the  demands  of 
the  soul,  in  the  midst  of  the  sins  and  sorrows  of  the 
world,  which  will  find  satisfaction  nowhere  but  in  the 
conviction  of  the  existence  of  a  personal  God,  with 
will,  intelligence,  and  consciousness,  infinitely  wise 
and  holy  and  good,  in  whom  we  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being. 

There  is  a  wonderfully  profound  suggestion  made 
by  Professor  Bowen,  that  the  theory  of  evolution  is 
the  philosophy  of  Hegel  applied  to  the  world  of  ma-  <* 
terial  phenomena.  Hegel's  philosophy  is  a  gigantic 
system  in  which  all  conceptions  are  necessarily 
evolved  from  thought.  It  is  the  higher  ideal  sphere 
of  evolution.  It  gives  us,  its  adherents  claim,  God, 
the  incarnation,  the  verities  of  the  Christian  faith.  )L 
Whether  this  be  so  or  not,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted 
that  the  new  aspects  in  which  the  universe  is  pre- 
sented by  the  principle  of  universal  evolution  will 
lead  to  a  higher  philosophy  of  God.  If  I  dared  to 
make  any  suggestion  as  to  the  drift  of  that  philosophy, 
I  should  say  it  would  be  in  the  direction  of  the  break- 
ing down  of  the  distinction  between  nature  and  spirit, 
and  the  illustration  of  St.  Paul's  wonderful  declara- 
tion that  God  is  all  in  all.  This  reconciliation  of 
Pantheism  with  the  personality  of  God  on  the  one 


314       CHRIST  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 


7< 


hand,  and  the  independence  in  some  sense  of  his  crea- 
ures  on  the  other,  is  the  great  problem  for  the  Theism 
of  the  future.  I  should  say  that  the  theory,  so  em- 
phatically condemned  by  the  Vatican  Council,  of  the 
evolution  of  the  universe  from  the  being  of  God, 
-/  furnished  the  best  possible  starting-point  for  future 
investigation. 

In  the  mean  time,  if  we  would  hold  fast  to  what  is 
best  in  life,  to  the  sources  of  noble  enthusiasms,  of 
grand  and  majestic  works  of  art,  of  the  sublimest 
poetry,  of  heroism,  of  pure  morals,  of  saintly  life,  God 
as  manifested  in  Jesus  Christ  must  be  enthroned  in 
the  adoring  homage  and  love  of  all  hearts. 


"  Mourn  not  for  them  that  mourn 
For  sin's  kefen  arrow  with  its  rankling  smart, 
God's  hand  will  bind  again  what  He  hath  torn, 

He  heals  the  broken  heart. 

But  weep  for  him  whose  eye 
Sees  in  the  midnight  skies  a  starry  dome 
Thick  sown  with  worlds  that  whirl  and  hurry  by, 

Yet  give  the  heart  no  home  ; 

"Who  marks  through  earth  and  space 
A  strange  dumb  pageant  pass  before  a  vacant  shrine, 
•  And  feels  within  his  inmost  soul  a  place 

Unfilled  by  the  divine." 

In  the  indescribably  glorious  revelation  w^hich 
this  stupendous  evolution  makes  to  us  of  God,  we 
can  say  with  a  new  meaning  and  a  deeper  signifi- 
cance :  — 

"  Thou,  Lord,  in  the  be^irinnino:  hast  laid  the  foun- 
dation  of  the  earth,  and  the  heavens  are  the  works  of 


THE  THEISTIC   BASIS   OF  EVOLUTION.  315 

thine  hands.  They  shall  perish,  but  thou  remainest, 
and  they  all  shall  wax  old  as  doth  a  garment,  and  as 
a  vesture  shalt  thou  fold  them  up  and  they  shall  be 
changed ;  but  thou  art  the  same,  and  thy  years  shall 
not  fail" 


[UHIVBRSITr] 


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